Friday, November 09, 2007

Bennetts, a poor dinner before a good film

Tonight is a story in two halves.

The poor half begins in Bennetts – a fine lunch venue at the intersection of East Belfast’s Belmont Road and the Holywood Road. Only snag is that it’s a much less good dinner venue.

Starting with an inaccurate drinks order; taking 35 minutes of so in a half-empty restaurant to serve the food; bringing a dairy-free salad with cheese sprinkled on top; forgetting to put the cheese in my cheese burger; taking a second drinks order but not bringing anything, then being reminded and still not bringing anything, and finally puring the drinks but leaving them on the counter, causing one of us to walk across to the bar and carry them back to the table.

Unimpressive. And surprisingly so given the usual good service at lunchtime.

Update: Forgot to mention that one of the tables had two couples come in and sit at it, and then leave before placing their food order. One lot had order drinks which never arrived, the other just seemed to get bored waiting for attention and wandered out. Not a good sign to be half empty on a Friday night.

Also wanted to say that Movies and Mochas closes bizarrely early on a Friday night - refusing to serve us tea/coffee when we got out of the cinema at half nine. Not a glorious night for Belmont catering!

(Oh, and I hadn’t realised before tonight that the Bennetts over at the Odyssey has now closed.)

3 comments:

David Todd said...

I've never been in Bennetts. Near that interchange I've been in the Stormont Inn, The Strand, the studios above the Strand, The Park Avenue,the Church across from the Park Avenue, a dentist a few doors down from the Stormont Inn, a barbers further down from that.I wanted to visit as many places in that vicinity and now you've put me off ;-)

Unknown said...

Bennetts is as you say a great lunch venue. I think they get exhausted after serving so many people that they just can't be bothered at night. By the way, surprised not to see a post about the Belfast wheel yet - or have I missed something?

Alan in Belfast (Alan Meban) said...

Some photos of the Rickety Wheel posted at the end of October - though flickr is coming down with them - but haven't made it up into the air yet.