Turtle Bay, the Caribbean restaurant at the Cornerhouse, is a fantastic place to enjoy happy hour. 241 cocktails 4pm – 7pm and after 10pm, it’s great value for money. You have to have the same cocktail for both but it doesn’t really matter.
My friends and I had a LOOOOOOONG overdue catch up this evening, with some of us not getting together for 18 months. It was a big celebration of friendship and we were all excited to get together.
However, I have been for food a fair few times with my mates and the standard seems to be slipping each and every time.
The restaurant was very quiet at 6pm yesterday (Monday) and so you would expect service to be 100% and the food to be hot and tasty. There was only about 6 occupied tables at this time. 4 of us (and a 2 year old) all ate and it was hit and miss.
Starting with mine. I go for the BBQ pork roll as it’s generally flavoured well, hot and only £7 with fries and coleslaw. It was well presented and came with crackling which is always a bonus. However the BBQ pork was cold and the coleslaw genuinely tasted like vomit, as did everyone else’s. (More on that later)
My friend Nicole went for the 1/4 chicken with pineapple glaze and rice. We sent it back (much to the disgust of the waiter) as it was cold. It returned as the rest of us had nearly finished our mains.
Lily went for the jerk lamb rump, medium, with green seasoning and sweet potato mash. She said it was really nicely flavoured, a little spicy and generally tasty. Except the coleslaw that tasted like vomit.
Sandra went for the 1/4 chicken with sweet potato fries which again was ok, but not particularly hot. The chips were great though and I stole a few while she wasn’t looking!
The main issue (apart from the vomit flavoured coleslaw) was the customer service when I spoke to a waiter. The conversation went somewhat like this:
Me: Excuse me, our coleslaw tastes wrong, can you please come over?
Waiter: No that’s just the dressing. It should be like that
Me: No, it tastes off, can you please come over?
Waiter: Erm well it does taste different to normal coleslaw
Me: It tastes like sick. Can you please remove it?
Waiter: Pfft
Me: Do you want to taste it?
He then came over to the table with a new plate of coleslaw, and showed no signs of removing the nasty tasting one from the plates. The coleslaw would have made the whole of our food taste nasty and instead of him bringing a bowl so we can scrape the coleslaw off our existing plates, or removing our plates so that the kitchen could do this, we ended up scraping it into our fry holders. Disgusting.
I then mentioned that one of the chicken dishes was cold, and he grabbed the plate and walked away, returning later with fresh chicken. This was at least half way through our meal meaning my friend had to continue her meal long after the rest of us had finished ours. I didn’t bother to ask for the pork to be changed, I was too hungry.
The complete lack of customer service makes me incredibly wary of going back again. It’s such a shame as some of the food was really nice but the way they handled a polite complaint has really turned me off the whole place and left a sour (and coleslaw vomit) taste in my mouth. We didn’t ask for a discount and one wasn’t offered. I wouldn’t mind but the level of service was so below par it was a joke.
*After I complained via twitter, I have been invited back for a complimentary meal. I will write a follow up post after I have been.
