The Gateway Restaurant

It wasn’t planned for lunch but some things are good left unplanned.
Yes I’m saying it’s good.
All three of us ordered something from the sandwich part of the menu.
Portions were big. So tick for value. Tasty too, so another tick. We ordered Mayo but original waitress forgot it and we had to reorder. Service, average, speedy.
It’s really a nice setting but it does have an open feel about it.

Poor. Museum cafes are always going to be a bit of a fleecing but to be a fleecing with such rotten service is very special indeed. The food was so-​so. £9 for a sandwich and chips with these presented in a silly, pretend frying basket. (Hate that). The main issue was how glacially slow this entire proceeding was. Our kid’s ice cream never arrived and the excuse was an overwhelmed kitchen staff. In a half empty restaurant? It was more likely to be a poorly managed kitchen and poorly trained staff. We asked to pay without having received our child’s dessert. We were not charged for the dessert. I asked the manager what the deal was and she said they had let in too many people who did not have reservations. Smells like bull to me. Don’t bother. The Botanics is always a nice treat but step out of the place for a snack. Really.

Unless you are looking for a completely uninspired breakfast experience, I would give the Gateway Restaurant a miss. I had heard that lunching here was recommendable and so, I hoped that perhaps breakfast might be worthwhile. Of course, the venue is beautiful, located as it is in the John Hope Gateway. But, warming the croissants could not mask how stale they were. The Aberdeen buttery did not seem much fresher. The stacked Scotch pancakes, were unimaginatively presented. Do not expect the wait staff to be able to provide any details about the presence of nut contamination in any of the food — despite the menu stating that they will. The reason that our waitress could not give us any details about possible nut contamination of course, was because all pastries are bought in from outside. This is not the first time I have been confronted with this issue and I still find it unacceptable that a restaurant, even if a food item is brought in from a bakery, cannot furnish the customer with details of ingredients, or other information relevant to the food item. Most disappointingly I suppose, was the fact that the food was not made in house. Why is it that a restaurant cannot bake/​make its own food? I assume that they do have a kitchen and cooks. I know from personal experience that a scone, a pancake, a loaf of bread are not complex undertakings in the kitchen.
I cannot fault the wait staff; they were pleasant enough. (Though some training from management might have been in order for our poor waitress was most thoroughly stumped when we asked her to enlighten us as to what an Aberdeen buttery was). Pleasant service though cannot make up for poor quality food. So, if you want to impress out-​of-​town guests, serve them a nice breakfast at home and head straight to the botanic gardens bypassing the Gateway Restaurant.

On a hot Easter Monday afternoon, we swung in here for afternoon tea. It was meltingly hot in the glass framed building, and we were desperate for a drink of water and looking forward to a proper tea service. But thanks to the waiters to seemed to idling around chatting, we couldn’t order anything and after a while sweating in the heat, got bored. So left. The manager kindly noted that I left my bag but didn’t bother to ask why we left without ordering. Oh well!