The Martins Arms, Colston Bassett

7 of us went to the Martins Arms on Sat eve for a meal and were sadly disappointed. It wasn't very clear at the beginning whether we had a table in the restaurant or in the bar even though we had booked a table in the restaurant. We ordered 2 bottles of wine (white and rose) - it was luke warm when we got it and it was of the screw top variety but it wasn't cheap! The waiter didn't enable us to taste the wine, he just poured it straight out. The food was good but when it came to coffee/ tea at the end the waiter just said as he passed our table "coffee?" and took our response to be that all 7 of us wanted straight coffees. When we flagged this wasn't quite what we had in mind and knowing there was a coffee/tea part to the menu we still didn't get given the menu so we could choose what we wanted. I asked for some herbal tea and the waitress who took this request said that a colleage would be back to take my order. What I actually got was a pot of vanilla tea brought straight over to me - no listing of tea options was offered and they just brought out the 1 herbal tea they had and presumed I wanted that! When I commented on this the waitress was noticeably peeved - anyone would have thought that I wasn't the customer! When the bill arrived it didn't include much detail and it was difficult to know if it was accurate. All in all it was an expensive evening out as the food is not cheap at all but the service and lack of hospitality was sadly lacking.

27 Sep 2010 13:22