M&S Cafe

M&S is the kind of cornerstone of the community type place that I’d always rely on so when a friend and i were stuck for lunch this week we decided to venture into the Café as m&s food ads are pure food porn so I’d kind of expect the same offerings in the café.
The café is situated on the 2^nd floor (the entrance is the 1^st floor apparently!) and you have to walk through the lingerie dept to get to it (slightly embarrassing if you’re an unaccompanied male!)
Firstly there was no nice aromas on entering the café which only had a handful of people in mostly having tea and cake and being over 55.
It’s light an airy with lots of room to sit and quite clean.
There is a large refrigerated display offering some delightful sounding sandwiches and a great selection of cold ‘packed lunch’ type food for kids.
The hot food counter (which was closed!- please order food at the till!!!) features a nice menu with some surprising offerings.
My friend opted for chicken & roasted veg toasted sandwich and I opted for the ‘Italian taster dishes’
The staff on the till where we ordered had no knowledge of the menu and moved at the pace of a snail which at ‘lunchtime’ is not ideal.
The service was quite poor overall and m&s are really letting themselves down here as while the food came as we’d ordered– it was very unappealing on the eye and featured no garnish at all and for £3.95 & £4.95 respectively it could have been better.
There was no pleasantries from the staff bringing the food out and while we were sat eating, 2 staff members were stood leaning on the nearby table discussing their bunions– a bit gross for lunchtime!
The sandwich was dry and nothing to write home about ‘I’ve had better offerings from Greggs’ was my friends comment!
My ‘Italian taster’ lunch had risotto balls, squash filled ravioli & a portion of meatballs. There was 3 of each.
The risotto balls were lovely but sadly a bit dry
The ravioli was not quite al-​dente but undercooked
The meatballs were nice but a very small portion
I don’t think my expectations are that high but they were definitely not met on this visit to m&s café as i was left hungry :-(
I shan’t be venturing there again in a hurry for lunch, maybe just stick to T and cake there with my Gran.