The Copper Kettle

I have been to The Copper Kettle twice now. The first time was a joy, attentive, friendly service and tasty well cooked food, so imagine my disappointment when I returned, and found the experience woeful from beginning to end. Strike one. I popped to the ladies shortly after I arrived and found the pipes of the toilet stuck back together by what looked like masking tape and leaking rather large puddles of water onto the bathroom floor. Not a great start... Strike two. Next we ordered our food from the rather surly waitress and asked for a bottle of wine and 2 glasses of water. She subsequently forgot all about our wine. the food arrived and I asked if we could have our wine please, she grunted and wandered off into the kitchen. We then had to ask for the wine 2 more times and eventually she managed to bring it to our table. There was no sign of the water and by this time I couldn't be bothered to ask again. Strike three. I ordered rack of lamb for my main. I cut into it and found it to be almost entirely raw. I am not faint hearted when it comes to pink meat, but this was absurd. I called the waitress over to complain, she grabbed my plate from the table and gruffly said they would cook it for me some more. She returned with my dish about 5 mins later and practically threw it down on the table with what can only be described as disgust. The resulting lamb (almost 70% fat and gristle I may add) was bland and tasteless and now a rather attractive shade of grey, and the vegetables that accompanied it were bitter and undercooked. I am not accustomed to complaining about food in restaurants, in fact this is the first time I ever had, and I wasn't prepared for the level of impatience and downright rudeness that ensued. I was not the only one to complain as the lady on the table next to me had to send her salad back. Strike four. We tried to salvage the meal by ordering 2 bannofee crumbles with ice cream. This consisted of bright yellow vanilla ice cream of the absolute cheapest variety, and some measly slices of banana covered in bottled toffee sauce with crushed up biscuit on top. This was delivered to our table in much the same ungracious manner, by what appeared to be the manager, as the waitress had supplied my offending lamb. I think it is fair to assume that my complaint about the lamb had not gone down very well with any of the Copper Kettle staff. I am very sad to write such a damning review as my first visit to the restaurant was so good, but i feel somewhat conned out of over 50 for practically inedible food and would hate for anyone else to be cheated in this way.