Turquoise Thistle

Poor. Disappointing!
This is the 2^nd ever place I’ve scored this low… in a month! Now either I’ve turned even more crabbit than normal or I’ve had amazingly bad luck with restaurants recently. I like to think the latter :)
This was my second visit here using an itison voucher deal. After the first crappy experience with bad service and appallingly cremated food (or i think it used to be food at some point) i vowed never to go back however someone bought my mum a voucher for her birthday and she asked me to go with her. Having such low expectations I thought «surely, it can’t be worse than the last time». Boy, was I wrong!
The voucher consisted of a cocktail and a starter and main meal each. I opted for a mojito which in the spectrum of cocktail quality was probably rated in the lower end. Very amateur, the kind anyone could rustle up in their house. NOT the quality one would expect from their «cocktail bar». However, this in itself isn’t a deal breaker.
The service was slooooooowwwwww! Far too long waiting for the drinks order to be taken, then compounded by an inexcusable wait for the starter. I’m talking about an hour!!!
The menu was small and contained poorly designed choices in my opinion. This is either a sign of an inexperienced chef or a way to penny pinch and skimp for us pesky voucher buyers! No decent restaurant in their right mind would offer 2 mediocre vegetarian soups in the same menu (one a chilled tomato soup at that. Yuch), and a chicken liver pâté which they replaced with salmon as they had run out. Chicken replaced with fish?!? Riiiiiight… As a non-​fish eater, after asking if the chef could do anything else for me as I didn’t like any of the starter options the waitress discussed salad options, going through the types of cheeses, nuts, fruits etc i liked for including in the salad. Initially I thought it a good sign they were willing to accommodate me. After the obscenely long wait (which was explained away as the chef ‘specially’ preparing my salad) what appeared was a very small bowl of hairy salad (you know, the cheap, curly bitter stuff that nobody likes) dressed in olive oil (no other flavouring) and some finely sliced sun dried peppers (well I THINK they were peppers but they were so chewy and wouldn’t actually break down upon chewing, they were totally inedible). The waitress had the grace to look embarrassed but I lost all respect for her when she asked me if it looked ok. I was like (whilst poking at it with my fork) «errrrrr… I’m not sure what the long wait was for. There is literally nothing in this salad». No response. After eating a couple if hairy, curly, bitter salad leaves I left it. No comment from the waitress as she sheepishly removed my plate. My mum’s smoked salmon wasn’t much better which was served with an unpleasantly bitter Lemon mayonnaise.
For the main I chose loin of pork as did my mum. The only other options were sea bass and an artichoke tart. After about 40 minutes, during which we watched everyone else get served (clearly not voucher holders) and who I can only presume to be some kind of manager, crane his neck at our table from the back of the restaurant a couple of times to see if our food had arrived before scurrying into the kitchen (didn’t have the balls to actually come to the table himself and apologise)… we walked out. Our Views were strongly expressed at reception as to how shoddy the experience was from start to finish and how we’d never be back.
People who buy vouchers are not second class citizens and just because it’s Prepaid does not give a restaurant the excuse to serve any old slop in whatever time frame they feel like. The fact this voucher was a gift made it even more embarrassing as we had to let the buyer know what happened so they could complain and get a refund.
This was exactly the same during my first visit shortly after they first opened. You’d think that such a nicely decorated place, ideally situated on the east end side of queen street and attached to a «boutique» hotel would learn from their mistakes. Nope!

I received an email questionnaire about my experiences dining at Turquoise Thistle. I have duly completed this and returned it. I am really hopeful that they can do better going forward, it is already positive that they are looking at feedback comments.

I think «promising» is perhaps the best word for Turquoise Thistle. Situated in the Hotel Indigo, on York Place, it’s a smart restaurant space, with a nice adjoining bar area. Lunch is reasonably priced at £12.95 for two courses; £14.95 for three. It lacks something, though, and a number of the dishes have room for improvement. However, the beef shin, currently on their menu, is very good, so it’s worth a visit simply to sample that dish.
So overall, we said: «Turquoise Thistle was pretty decent. I get the impression that there’s a really good restaurant waiting to happen here, but things just need to be approached with a little more confidence. Dishes were well thought out, but lacked a little in the execution. The place is likely to suffer from lack of lunchtime footfall, while the tram works are going on in York Place, but will serve its hotel patrons rather nicely. I can imagine that I’ll be back in the future. I hope to see them building on the success of their friendly service and stylish premises, as well as that excellent beef dish, which was a real winner.»