Alex Wade

Review of Restaurant Petrus

The champagne reception was lovely and the welcome...

The champagne reception was lovely and the welcome was great. However, a short while after we were shown to our table, the waitress said we had to keep the noise down because the chefs couldn't concentrate and that they could hear us upstairs. This was nonsense, you couldn't hear anything from upstairs. The manager, Larry? then came down and told us to keep the noise down. When we contested, he simply walked off. We could not believe what had just happened. We tried several times to have follow up conversations with him. I eventually said I was going to make a formal complaint about it, his words to me were 'go for it'. So unprofessional.

At this point, my wife's 40th birthday had been ruined, she was very upset and I was left thinking, i've paid a lot of money for this experience and we have been told by a very arrogant 25 year old to keep the noise down like naughty children in a classroom, unbelievable.

Eventually my wife then spoke to Larry separately and after a while he then apologised to us all and offered a complimentary drink. I have to say, the minute we got told to keep the noise down when we were not particularly noisy, definitely set the tone for the evening. We were made to feel like an inconvenience by the manager and the head chef, who I believe did not even make eye contact with us once. We felt like we were a nuisance to everyone. I assume anyone booking the kitchen table is generally celebrating something and will be making some noise, if that's not acceptable at Petrus, you shouldn't put a table in the kitchen in my opinion.

The atmosphere was dry and the lack of interaction with the kitchen had everything to do with that.

I've never complained about a restaurant before and certainly didn't expect to be complaining about this experience and won't be recommending it.