I've wanted to give Cantina Vinopolis, located in Borough Market, a try for some time. After receiving a BuyAGift voucher for Christmas last year, the opportunity came up. When we both arrived, we were the first to be seated in the restaurant. After initial good service, the service went downhill as soon as we were seated and I asked which wines were available with our voucher. Now, potentially this could be a nice restaurant as the food is not bad, but the service was terrible.
(Not only was the service bad, but I ordered a bottle of Prosecco and was informed after 15 or 20 minutes that the Prosecco was not cold. Why they didn't inform us of this before we received our starter is another issue. We were told that it would be chilled in 15 minutes if we wanted to wait, and we did decide to wait. I asked for the Prosecco to be delivered before our food, and I was hungry so I overdid it on the bread rolls while we waited.)
We received our glass of white wine after a little too long, and then the menus were taken away and we were given a cut-down menu. I'd already decided what I wanted from the other menu, and I was not keen on any of the mains on the new menu.
My partner had the chicken liver and foir gras pate with chutney and brown bread, and I had the soup of the day, which ended up being a creamy tomato. The soup was quite nice.
For the main, I decided upon the gnocchi filled with tomato, basil and mozzarella in a tomato sauce. I was not keen on the meat dishes on offer as they did not offer the spring chicken that I was looking forward to that I had decided to have on the main menu before the menus were removed and replaced with a BuyAGift menu! My partner opted for the duck leg.
The gnocchi tasted alright, but I had an overdose on tomato and carbs. After the bread fiasco while we waited for our bottle of Prosecco (which still was not chilled enough), so I was unable to finish my meal.
I started to feel a bit ill as I had eaten too much. I had to leave some of my main behind, and to tell you the truth, I was not even excited by the dessert by the time it arrived. And actually, it didn't seem like much of a loss. The dessert was not the best. We both ordered the dark chocolate mousse with raspberry sorbet. The mousse was not creamy and did not have much taste. The raspberry sorbet was nice, though.
Overall, I had to give this place low marks on the service we received. I am not sure why they have a different menu for BuyAGift. The voucher is still expensive enough to merit the original menu options, surely. BuyAGift is not like Groupon, where the prices are greatly discounted.
Have you visited Cantina Vinopolis? What did you think of it?
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