The Ripe Tomato: Notting Hill, London 0

Fancy having a table (purposely) dropped on your foot? A bottle of olive oil slammed down an inch (or so) away from your face? A mountain of pepper cracked alllllllllll over your pasta by a waitress without her asking if you want it? A menu shoved into your hand pretty much before you’ve sat down, but then your order only taken 25 minutes later??

I thought not….

Yeah well, neither did I….but I didn’t get the choice……

When I ‘signed up’ for dinner at The Ripe Tomato I wasn’t expecting to leave the restaurant feeling like I wanted to punch a wall, rather, I was expecting a really nice night out, at a casual Italian restaurant, with gorgeous food, friendly service and a funky atmosphere……Ohhhh, how wrong I was…..

Look, to be honest, apart from the service, everything else was pretty much up to scratch, however, tonight’s experience is just another very very good example of HOW FUNDAMENTALLY IMPORTANT good service at a restaurant is and how poor service just leaves such a horrid taste in your mouth….far longer-lasting and far worse than a bad piece of steak……

In summary, the atmosphere at The Ripe Tomato was cool….funky and relaxed with a young, chilled Notting Hill crowd dining there…..

The food was good – not great, but good. For starters we had a Caprese salad (ripe tomato!! and fresh mozza) and calamari fritti (crunchy, not oily, fresh seafood and a great tartare); then for mains we had a whole sea bass(flavoursome, very very fresh served with very nicely cooked veges – it’s hard to cook very very nice steamed veges!) and a pasta Marinara (delicious tomato and garlic sauce, lots of mussels, generous serving, definitely not the best Marinara I’ve had but absolutely tasty/good.)

The food was reasonably priced – starters were around £7 and our mains were £12 – £15, so not cheap but as I said, reasonable…..

But the service was horrendous.

I just DO NOT understand how restaurant owners/managers can allow rude wait staff to remain employed. I know ‘good staff are hard to find’ as everyone always says so, but there’s a difference between a boring/standard/average waitress and a rude rude *sighs* ruuuuuuuuude horrie-face. Completely uneccessary and unfortunately, all I am going to remember from that place.

Until she’s gone, don’t you go.