Mary Worby
Google
This is a copy of an e-mail I have sent to the owners of the Whitebrook twice and received no reply.
I wanted to feed back on the experience we had at the Whitebrook yesterday evening (August 2nd). We had booked the 9-course tasting menu as a treat for our anniversary and were looking forward to a wonderful evening out.
I would also like to preface this with the fact we are no strangers to fine dining and have eaten out in many exceptional restaurants both at home and abroad.
We arrived at the restaurant promptly at three minutes to seven for our reservation at seven and were ushered somewhat hurriedly through to the restaurant area and seated. While we were offered water straight-away, it was twenty minutes before we even had sight of a wine list, for which we had to ask the waiter. We were served a selection of courses, all intricately detailed, with a huge amount of effort and lots of different flavours involved. It was clear there was real expertise in the kitchen, although we felt that perhaps the complexity was sometimes to the detriment of the real star ingredients, which should maybe have been allowed to shine more. The service was polite and effective throughout.
The major issue we had was the pace at which the courses came out. I am well aware that fine dining is not fast food, and these intricate dishes take time to prepare, but a tiny plateful of food every half an hour to forty minutes makes for a very long evening. It was well over three hours before we got to the ‘main’ course, the hogget, and by this stage we simply did not have the energy for the remaining two courses. We informed the sommelier accordingly and asked that we be brought the bill and not charged for the remaining two courses. We were told that the Whitebrook does not like to rush the experience, and we should have been aware that it could take up to three and a half hours to get through the courses. We were already three and a half hours in with two more courses to go. The time shown on our bill is 22:41.
The younger male member of staff then came to our table, admitted they were a chef down for the evening and accused us of arriving late. He said it was made clear that they liked diners to arrive half an hour beforehand for a drink in the bar (we have checked through all our correspondence and have scoured your website, including going through a full new booking process (but not completing it) and no mention is made of this). He added that the fact that we did not do this supposedly threw all their timings off, so our service did not in fact start until 1940. I have certainly not come across a restaurant that insists on customers arriving half an hour in advance of their reservation time. He tried to turn the blame for the slow food on us in spite of the fact that the sommelier had already admitted it had taken too long and agreed with us (in front of him) that we had indeed arrived before 19:00. We find that conduct utterly unacceptable. We did not withhold the service charge as that would have been unfair on the other staff members, i.e. the waitress and the sommelier.
We were charged full price for the tasting menu and one bottle of wine but not charged for one extra glass of wine each or our water. I do not believe is it is fair that we were falsely accused of arriving late. Promptness is something that is very dear to our hearts and I’m sure you have CCTV footage that proves we were exactly on time for our booking. Had the staff merely apologised for the slow delivery of food due to the fact they only had two chefs, we would have thought nothing more of it. As it is, the attitude of your staff left us with a very sour taste in our mouths.
