Gone downhill

Rating - Overall: 2  Food: 2  Service: 1  Ambience: 2

Deano
Rookie Reviewer
Member since Apr 09
Rating: 0

12 Apr 2009

We visited Howards with some friends on Saturday 11th April, having eaten there on several previous occasions. Sadly the standard of service and food has gone downhill and we are reluctant to recommend it. Certainly in a recession, you would expect restaurants to be making an extra effort to retain or attract custom - on the evidence of our meal they could be in for a tough time.

The starters (mussels x 2, melon and smoked salmon) were OK although the sauce accompanying the mussels was rich and rather overpowering. Mussels don't need so much cream and their flavour was somewhat lost.

For the mains we had ordered steak, pork medallions and seabass x2. The seabass was very good, but things began to go downhill from there as the chef cooking the steak obviously had no idea what medium should look like and had totally overdone it. Something had gone wrong with the pork which was too salty.

However all was not lost and we were looking forward to desserts. This is where things took a turn for the worse, the raspberry ripple icecream suddenly disappeared within 30 seconds of the waitress taking our order (she should have known it had already been used up), the Tia Maria creme brulee was totally lacking in flavour with no evidence of any spirits and something called a rhubarb crumble was actually rhubarb with a sprinkling of icing sugar on the top - no crumble found! At the same time, the kitchen were burning a chocolate brownie under the grill, filling the restaurant with a rather nasty, acrid odour. The young waiter was not interested in our observation about the missing crumble, totally indifferent and not what an establishment like Howards should be employing.

As for coffee - the cafetiere was 1//3rd full of ground coffee, the resulting brew was undrinkable to anyone but the most hardcore of caffeine addicts and we sent it back.

So you would think an almost empty restaurant would have been keen to give us the bill but no, the young staff were more interested in chatting amongst themselves and we had to go up to the desk and ask for it ourselves. Our evening was summed up by the inability of the waitress to divide £146.30 by 2 without the aid of a lengthy spell on a calculator.

Something's gone wrong at Howards which is a real shame as it used to be very good and we have introduced a lot of people to it over the years. On the evidence of last night we will not be going back.

Visited: April 11, 2009
What I ate: Mussels, pork, rhubarb crumble but without the crumble

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