Laura Marinello

Review of The Banana Store, Restaurant, ...

Booked an afternoon tea at OXO Tower for my manage...

Booked an afternoon tea at OXO Tower for my manager's baby shower for a Friday afternoon. The menu accommodated our variety of dietary needs and there were no issues with last minute guest drop outs which was great. The restaurant was beautiful and the view was nice, but that's where the positive ends.

When booking I had confirmed three times in advance that we would be able to get the table early in order to set up decorations and party favours. Upon arrival we were told, quite rudely, that we would not be able to get to the table until 3 as that is when our booking started. No apologies or explanation if the earlier booking had run over or any effort to tell us they'd inform us when the table was ready. Keep in mind that half the restaurant was empty at this time. My friend and I waited in the bar until the rest of the group came, during which she accidentally spilled a full glass of water on her chair/floor that took 15 mins for a member of staff to notice and do anything about. There was a service charge on her bill for a single glass of prosecco and when the rest of the group arrived we had to awkwardly wait for our table to be ready so we could go and set up the small treats for the guest of honour. No one offered to take their coats, though we had ours taken when we arrived.

After we sat down, it took almost an hour for the food to be served (despite preordering from the set tea menu), by which time much of the tea we had been given was cold. The waiters made us re-arrange our seats based on how they had plated the dietary requirements, even though they'd been told at least half an hour before which person was sat where and could have asked us then or plated the towers to accommodate. (We had one vegan and one without smoked salmon - it wouldn't have been hard).

From the tea, the sandwiches were nice and there was an interesting selection of savoury treats, though the scotch eggs had several bones on one plate. The scones were average and cold and we had to ask multiple times for the jam and cream to go with them. There were only three sweet options in addition to the scones which was completely unbalanced from the variety of savoury. On the plus side, there was a lovely vegan cream option available.

Overall the service throughout the afternoon was poor, disorganised and inattentive. Several of the guests (only a table of 8) had to ask multiple times for their drinks to be refreshed and no one ever asked us how the food or drink was.