"Chef's night off?"

A review of The Bothy Restaurant by Gill written on Wednesday 23rd of January 2008

Chef’s night off?

We had booked a table for 6 people at The Bothy to celebrate a 40th birthday. We arrived full of great intentions to put a positive spin on the occasion by enjoying a special meal. We’d liked the look of the restaurant menu online. Sadly the expectation was let down by the experience of the mediocre fare and truculent staff. As three of our party are vegetarians we had chosen The Bothy because it offered a number of attractive ‘veggie’ dishes. However we were told on arrival that they didn’t service ala carte on a Sunday, despite the website not stating this. We would have to order from a set menu on which the soup turned out not to vegetarian despite be listed as such, and only a couple of veggie options were available. We asked the waitress (a petulant rude individual) why this wasn’t advertised. Her response? “It's nothing to do with me”. Well it is actually, you work there. A simple apology for the inconvenience would suffice. It never came. A request if the chef could offer any additional vegetarian options resulted in the offer of ‘nut loaf’. The evening went downhill from then. Our aperitifs were delivered by our waitress with all the charm of Eva Braun and were practically slammed onto the table. Despite our attempts at cheery smiles and making the best of things we were passed onto another waiter (obviously we were seen as trouble!). His attitude was feed them don’t speak to them. Our meal? Mediocre. The chef’s nights off? Meat dishes were reasonable a good battered haddock and wild boar sausages with balsamic red cabbage were the highlight. However I can only assume that the pea and ham soup had a ham stock cube waved over it because there wasn’t any ham in it, and it was khaki, not a good look. The mixed grill slopped about in a pool of red wine jus, why I still can’t fathom. The cheese selection was okay but why no butter? And bizarrely the orange chocolate desert was missing the orange. The worst part of the evening? Well it’s a toss up between the desperately poor and arrogant waiting staff working that that night, and a herb and spring onion risotto which was tasteless and so solid you could cement breezeblocks with it. No ... it was definitely the staff. Not a sorry, thank you, did you enjoy your meal, nothing. Even when we pointed out they had undercharged us! Did I mention the restaurant was deathly quiet? No surprise there then. .

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