All Star Lanes
To celebrate my 22nd birthday I decided to go to All Star Lanes! I was really excited to go here because I love American food!
There are 5 All Star Lanes restaurant, 4 in London and 1 in Manchester. I decided to go to the Brick Lane restaurant because it had the best reviews out of the others.
Please click here for the menu.
 |
| I Love NY Cocktail - mix of Finlandia vodka, Aperol, passion fruit and apple juice. |
The Food
I really struggled to choose what I wanted to have for dinner. In the end, I chose to share the popcorn squid and the bbq chicken with my sister. I really enjoyed the popcorn squid however I was not a fan of the bbq chicken. I thought the flavour was too strong! For my main course, it was between the King Pin Burger (treacle cured bacon cheeseburger, crowned with a mac & cheese croquette) and the 10oz Rib-Eye Steak. I decided to chose the steak although I wish I had gone for the burger because I have never seen or tried a burger which has mac & cheese in it! My brother chose the burger and he was so full after eating it and it only cost £12 (bargin).
I was impressed by the steak, I thought it was cooked perfectly. However, I was not a fan of the cracked pepper & bourbon sauce sauce, although having said that, I've always liked my food pretty plain! The steak and fries set me back £22 which I think is okay for London.
The Service
I really enjoyed the food but I was really disappointed with the service we received. For a group of 16 people, I don't really expect the service to be the same as if you were dining for a table of 4 people, however what we experienced was shocking.
Firstly, my brothers meal did not arrive although the waiters did manage to deal with the situation well. Secondly, we were notified when booking the table that the table would only be available for two hours due to the booking being a Saturday night. On the night, it was not busy yet we felt pressurised to finish our food quickly. They were cleaning the whole table even though it was incredibly obvious that people had not finished their meals. I have worked as a waitress before and I have been trained to never start clearing a table unless everyone has finished their meals. This should apply to every restaurant and I was shocked that they would try to hurry us along to the bar area. My brother decided to leave after dinner therefore he paid for his meal. We decided as a group to sort the bill after drinks.
The area for drinks was really nice and chilled and it was a great atmosphere. I wish I had booked bowling as it looked really fun. We were all having a nice evening catching up over dinner and drinks. However, when it came to sorting the bill at the end of the night, the waitress who was dealing with it was clearly undertrained. She did not know what "debit" meant. Debit was written at the bottom of the receipt under all our orders to indicate that some money had already been paid towards the bill. However, the lady kept saying we owed money even though we kept explaining to her that it had already been paid. We decided to go back and speak to the waiters from earlier who then explained to their colleague it had been paid. This in all took approximately 30 minutes to sort out which resulted in us missing our last direct train home. I thought it was abysmal that it took so long to sort out the bill. As a group of 16 people. we spent hundreds in this restaurant yet they treated us so badly. I'm not going to go as far as saying this completely ruined my night but it definitely impacted it in a negative way. I understand that people do make mistakes but it was after all my birthday meal and they knew that. I feel as though a lack of training led to these mistakes being made.
I feel as though a couple of staff let their team down and the restaurant down. This goes to show how important training is as a few mistakes can lead to people having a bad experience and not wanting to return.
Would I Recommend This Restaurant?
I think it's fair to say that I haven't had the best experience with restaurants when in a large group. I think I would return here but as a much smaller group (max 6). I feel as though the experience would be better and less mistakes would be made. If I was to rate my experience, I would give it 5/10. Without the mistake made, I would easily have given it 8/10. I think All Star Lanes are generous to give a free drink worth £7.50 if its your birthday and a birthday card. It's a nice gesture and not many restaurants do that.
No comments:
Post a Comment