The Botanist Reading, Area And Whole Venue Hire

It was my second time visiting the Botanist, thought it would be a great place to visit again as I had an enjoyable experience last time round. Unfortunately, it was very underwhelming. I’ll start off by saying that on the whole the food was okay. For start I had the hummus and and my friends had the calamari, and that was good. And then for main I had the Buddha bowl, which was nice. However my friend ordered a sirloin steak, priced at £25, and it was poor. He ordered it medium rare and evidently came out at well done, and overall it looked like a really poor cut of meat. But the food wasn’t the main disappointment. The dissatisfaction came with the service/waiting time. Initially it took just over 30 mins to even take our food order, and considering it wasn’t busy, it was concerning. In fairness the 3 starters came fairly quickly after our order was taken, but once cleared it took around an hour for our mains to come. At around the 30 min waiting time, the waiter came over to tell us that “our food is on its way and won’t take long” but then took a further 30 mins. There was no apology about the wait when the food came, neither were we asked if everything was okay. There seemed to be a lack of awareness from staff that things were below par, evident from adding 12.5% onto our bill. Overall it was just very underwhelming. Perhaps they had a lot of new staff, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. But it’s fair to say it’s unlikely I’ll return.

Came here to celebrate something special. Got in at 7pm, first drink came at 7:15 which was fine. Then came the wait. We complained then the meal got served 7:45pm along with the second drink after we said we were leaving. The wait wasn’t great, no one explained anything until we complained. After we finished eating the very bland food, we waited another 15 minutes before our tables got cleared. This was after the waiter passed our table several times without paying any attention to us. We had already ordered dessert along with the main meal… but we still had to wait again after our main dishes had been cleared to even get that. Not sure I’ll ever be back after this encounter that has left me feeling annoyed by everything (the service & the food). Not great at all because I had lost all my appetite by the time dessert was served.