How many hours do you need to eat lunch?

To celebrate a success at work our team was awarded a lovely lunch out, and after enjoying their roof top pool bar our team leader suggested lunch at Lennons’s Restaurant and Bar.

 

We had just under 2 hours set aside for lunch so really plenty of time in usual circumstances for a lunch including dessert.

 

So I will start with the positives:

 

1.     The food that came out correctly was delicious – my lamb dish was amazing.

2.     The service by our service was excellent, she was attentive and friendly and sadly I think she copped the brunt of the fall out from our discontent.

3.     The décor and atmosphere – The restaurant itself is beautiful and some very cool bathrooms.

 

No complaints about my lamb and gnocchi

 

 

Now sadly to the important stuff which sadly ruined our lunch.

 

1.     We arrived at 12:15 and our meals arrived well after 1:30pm;

2.     Due to the late arrival of our mains we had to cancel our dessert.

3.     The orders came out all mixed up, and even when we queried whether the order was correct we were assured (by David) that they were correct, this caused people to start eating and then the correct orders came out and plates had to be swapped – lucky our team likes each other a lot !!!

4.     Many of the steaks came out under cooked, in fact the steak that was ordered well done came out the rarest and had to be recooked. (To be transparent in the end we were not charged for this steak).

 

Now the really bad stuff:

 

We were approached David ,who I assumed to be the duty manager, who had overhead our dissatisfaction, he asked that my team leader and I come and speak privately.

 

We addressed our concerns at the table, the excuse for the delay with our food was apparently due to someone ordering a well done steak (yes the one that ended up having to re cooked), and that these steaks take 40 minutes to cook. During this time David leaned over me at the table in a way that I felt invaded my personal space. Its just a pity that it took longer than 40 minutes in any event for our food to come out.

 

David continued to ask to speak to use privately which I did not think was necessary, instead we opted to pay our bill and leave and David continued to try and debate the matter as we were paying.

 

So will we be back, that a big now. We had money to spend and didn’t even get to spend it. As a new restaurant Lennon’s need to change both their service in the kitchen and quicken things up and maybe give their managers some extra customer service training.

 

***Post Note***  We have since been contacted by the General Manager Russell, who has offered our team a complimentary lunch to make amends for our experience, this was before my blog was published. To be fair I will review Lennon's again. Fingers crossed it will be a better experience.