Think the service at your local chippie's bad? Well, reassure yourself that paying more money to eat at a top notch restaurant doesn't guarantee you any more civility, according to the latest Square Meal restaurant guide survey. The five worst restaurants for service, based on the survey results, are Cipriani, Inn The Park, Le Palais du Jardin, The Wolseley and Yauatcha.
Perhaps the survey respondents have particularly high expectations when spending above a certain amount, not just in the quality of food but also in the quality of service. The Independent says that:
Of the 8,000 people who replied to the guide's poll, almost half (45 per cent) complained about shoddy service for the third year running.
We assume they don't mean that the same people complained three years in a row, or else you'd have to question why these people continue to go out to eat. Are they incapable of cooking for themselves or are they just professional complainers?
The Wolseley came for some particularly strong criticism with comments such as "snobby and unfriendly" and "Just the most unhelpful and incredibly arrogant and rude receptionists that can be found". Ouch. The best comment, though, was the one about Inn At The Park:
We do wonder whether the service staff are ex-convicts on a scheme from Westminster, but dismissed this as we believe that convicts may have been more astute to the requirements of the customer.
If they want to test that one out, they could always try eating out at High Down Prison's restaurant in Banstead.
Of the restaurants mentioned, we've only eaten at Yauatcha and while we found the whole experience somewhat OTT (we're much happier with the dim sum in Chinatown), we can't say we thought the service was any worse than that which we've experienced elsewhere, either in London or around the world. In fact, by far the worst restaurant experience we had was in Cape Town (in a laughably pretentious restaurant called One.Waterfront, in case you're curious).
So what do you think? Have you got any particularly bad or good experiences to report? Get back to us via the comments.
Photo is taken from publicenergy's Flickr photostream under the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons licence.
