The Minnis Bar & Restaurant

We visited the Minnis for a Christmas eve lunch 2011. Not in the mood for christmas Fayre I order from the a la carte menu. My starter of Mussles were fresh and delicious. For my entree I ordered Roasted Monkshill Farm Lamb & Homemade Chorizo which the waitress informed me would be rare (the lamb). This was fine with me and what i was expecting.

When the Lamb Arrived it was accompanied by small tired sad piles of Ratatouille and three small potatoes which to taste were no better than aunt Bessies - in fact worse. The Lamb itself was grossly overcooked and inedible and when I tried to tackle it I actually couldn't cut through it.

Now I wan't you to pause for thought here. I actually couldn't cut through the lamb. What needs to have happened to a cut of meat for you not to be able to get a knife through it?

When the waitress came back to the table I explained the problem and asked if she would relay my experience to the chef. She took my plate of lamb and disapeared. Minutes later she returned and asked if we wanted dessert or coffee - no mention of the Lamb. I declined dessert and opted for coffee.

I would like to stress here I have never in my life complained about a restaurant or written a review. But when the waitress returned with our bill, no mention of the lamb and charged for it I was so flabberghasted that I just sat dumbfounded in the belief that what had been said and what i had been presented with must have been a figment of my imagination, a postprandial daydream if you like.

We paid and left, confused and asking 'did that really happen?' I wouldn't recommend The Minnis Bar and Restaurant to others which is a shame because in part it was good. The location is great and the staff were actually friendly. If I felt we had been overlooked because it was a busy lunch then I would be ok, but there were only 16 people in the restaurant for the whole lunch sitting and I counted 4 waiting staff. My thought is the relationship between the Waiting staff and Chef was not good, or the actual chef was off for Christmas. These explanations are not excuses,more a way for me to try and understand the reason for the chef not acknowledging his mistake and not coming out to the restaurant to apologise and not offering me a different dish and failing these usual customer service responses, making the right choice not to charge for food that was inedible. None of the above occurred and the whole experience left my family group feeling less than jolly about our Christmas Eve at the Minnis! (Date of experience: Dec, 2011 )