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Friday 21 December 2018

Food | The Botanist Coventry

The Botanist Coventry

Coventry has become such a brilliant city with all these new places popping up! The Botanist is the newest restaurant to open in Broadgate in Coventry, and I was delighted to be invited to the launch night of The Botanist. 


The Botanist Coventry
The Botanist Coventry

 The evening was filled with lovely live music, cocktails in plant pots being served to everyone within the venue who would like to try them - myself and Adam were lucky enough to try the delicious Raspberry Disaronno Sours cocktail which was literally smoking - such a good effect and great for the gram of course!

The Botanist Coventry
The Botanist Coventry
The Botanist Coventry

There were different foods being served around, canape style, and I tried some halloumi bites, sausage rolls and a mini burger - such cute treats! The whole evening had such good vibes about the place, which cocktail masterclasses happening behind the bar, a gin tasting session on the terrace and wine tasting under the canopy. You can actually book masterclasses there too - great for a special occasion or birthday! So the launch night was a great success! Let's see how the food tasting, non alcoholic drinks and overall service went!

The Botanist Coventry
The Botanist Coventry

The Botanist definitely have a good taste in decor! The whole place had a green house effect with the glass roof, where you can see the Coventry Spires from the bar. It was very clean and tidy around the whole venue, even if a mess was made by a glass or plate being dropped, they were straight on it clearing it up - of course great health and safety points here! Anyway, as gorgeous as the place is, let's move onto the drinks!

The Botanist Coventry
Botanist Lemonade £4.75 (left) - Tropical Crush £5.50 (right)
The Botanist Coventry

The drinks and the drinks menu itself was full of so many different concoctions that I wanted to try them all! Unfortunately due to being the designated driver, I mainly tried the mocktails, but I also tried the Raspberry Disaronno Sours on the launch night, which as lovely as this plant pot cocktail is, it is a little pricey for £7.95, but worth it if you want to take some good photos as well as have a very nice and unusual tasty drink! 

The Botanist Coventry
Matcha Melon Iced Tea £8.95
The Botanist Coventry
Raspberry Disaronno Sours Cocktail £7.95
The Botanist Coventry
Berry Good Times £4.75

I was lucky enough to try all of the delicious alcohol free drinks! My favourite had to be Tropical Crush (£5.50) as we all know I love a porn star martini, so this was a great alcohol free alternative! Definitely a favourite! But then All The Greens (£4.75) was such a nice and healthy drink, as it came with a shot of green goodness in a pipette! All The Greens Mocktail included, fresh mint, kiwi and ginger with a splash of apple and lemon. All boosted with plant-powered elixir! Absolutely loved this one! Berry Good Times (£4.75) was also a lovely one and speaks for itself, with blueberries, blackberries, mint and raspberry syrup all mixed together with apple and cranberry juice! All of these mocktails are such a healthy alternative for alcohol too if your not an alcohol fan! Juniper Garden (£5.50) is also a lovely alternative for gin! Honestly the drinks menu is full of hidden goodness that you must try! Definitely a brilliant place to go for drinks, with the live music and lovely low lighting during the evening gives it such a chill vibe for a cocktail evening. The only thing is, the waiting time to be served at the bar can be quite some time, as they make all the cocktails from scratch as you can imagine, but quite interesting to watch too! That's the only downside, other than that the drinks are lovely and very well presented!

The Botanist Coventry
The Botanist Coventry

Moving onto food. Now I'm a massive food fan so The Botanist gave me very high expectations considering how amazing the place looked. Myself and the lovely girls from Coventry Bloggers were kindly invited to try the Sunday Roast menu one Sunday which I was SO excited about, as roast dinners are honestly one of my favourite dinners next to a cheeky hot curry. So once we entered into The Botanist, we stood around with our drinks taking a few snaps of the place in the daylight, we were served our drinks at the bar, then seated at our table and given the Sunday Roast menu. Sorry to the veggies reading this, but you will also benefit from reading this as they had a vegetarian option available which was a lovely Mushroom, Red Lentil, Stilton and Chestnut Roast (£10.95) that Amani from Amani-Alwadi had and looked rather nice actually! So the main meat on the menu was, Chicken, Lamb, Beef or Pork Belly. 

The Botanist Coventry

Unfortunately they ran out of chicken and lamb, now I love chicken so I was rather disappointed by this, so I went for Roast Beef instead (£13.95). We also ordered sides, I went for Baked Courgette, Sage and Apricot Stuffing Balls (£2.50) and these tasted SO good and came out lovely and warm in their little pot. When our roast dinners came out they looked rather lovely! So we all tucked in and asked each other how they were, much to our surprise, they were all cold, like they'd been standing for quite some time. The roast potatoes didn't look cooked enough either. So we called a member of staff over and they kindly took them all back and brought out a fresh batch, but quite a fair wait longer, by this time we were all rather hungry, so I was sat eating my stuffing balls basically as a starter as the food took rather a long time to be brought out again - understandable when it had to be redone. Once our meals were brought out again, they were lovely and hot! So we tucked in and it was rather delicious actually and full of flavour, slightly overpriced seeing as the dinner was rather small and also lacking in gravy, but I love to drown my roast dinner in gravy, so maybe they should bring out extra gravy or just not add gravy to the dish as not everyone loves it and have it on the side when brought out - something for when they do a new menu hopefully!

The Botanist Coventry

The puddings on offer for the Sunday roast sounded lovely! But after all our waiting - we'd been there since 1pm and by this time it was 3:30pm, we had to ask if we were receiving puddings as per everyone else during the review and they had completely run out of the Toffee Apple, Pear and Almond Crumble to share (£9.50) they were supposed to be serving. Therefore they could only offer ice cream, and myself and Emily from Drained Beauty (read her review here) being lactose intolerant we couldn't even have any pudding. Which was rather disappointing as you can imagine, as everyone always has room for pudding!

The Botanist Coventry

Due to how the Sunday Roast afternoon went, we were kindly invited back to try the official food menu. There was so much choice I couldn't chose between the Sirloin Steak (£17.95) or the Chicken Hanging Kebab (£11.95). Me loving chicken and the sound of sweet chilli all over it just made my mouth water! Some of us ordered our drinks at the bar and some at the table, we also asked for tap water and was given a bottle, which we kindly asked the waitress for this to be taken back as we were happy with tap water. Once our food was all ordered, we once again, waited for at least 40 minutes or longer to be served our main meals.

Once the meals came out, my Chicken Kebab looked rather impressive on a hanging metal hook. unfortunately the kebab came with mushrooms and onions, which my stomach doesn't really agree with, so I had to remove these as they came this way and the kitchen couldn't remove them - not a problem I'd just rather not have my chicken have a mushroom or onion taste to it. Moving on, the chips were cover in 'salt & pepper' sauce - basically chilli chips - YES PLEASE! I love chips honestly haha, so these were such a nice difference to have! The chicken kebab was actually rather tasty, but I wasn't the warmest of dishes, neither were the chips. I also felt that for how much you'd be paying for this dish, it was lacking a little something, basically the portion size should be slightly bigger as £11.95 is rather a lot for such a small meal.

A few of the other girls ordered Sirloin Steak £17.95, which came out even smaller than my portion of food, with just a small slab of steak, a spoonful or two of coleslaw and a pot of fries. Now £17.95 is rather a lot considering the portion size for them was not big at all. I'm quite glad I didn't order steak after seeing their size portions and in all honesty I would not pay nearly £20 for a tiny size meal like that.

The Botanist Coventry

Moving on to puddings, I kept to the kebab theme and ordered the Hanging Kebab (£6.75), which included as stated in the menu, marshmallows, strawberries, brownie, doughnut, cake pops, candyfloss and vanilla ice cream. As lovely as this all looked and sounded, I have to point out that the cake pops had coconut in, this was not stated in the menu, and what would have happened if I was allergic to coconuts, this wasn't stated in the menu. Which I feel is a major issue, as if a parent was to order this for their child that may be allergic to coconut, then they would not even realise. So this is something that should be mentioned in their menu for allergy reasons. The brownie was also rather bitter and salty with no sugar to it, who likes a salty brownie? The dessert also came with a fruit coolie, which is nice, but I feel melted chocolate, or chocolate sauce would of been a better alternative to this rather good creation! Other than these 3 things, this is a great combination of a dessert, just a shame those 3 things occurred!

The Botanist Coventry

Lastly, service is a major part of myself wanting to go back to a venue/restaurant again. I'm always honest to my readers, so the whole truth will be told. The staff were lovely when we arrived at The Botanist and we were greeted and guided straight to our table upstairs right by the balcony, we were then later on served by a waitress asking if we'd like any drinks, some girls ordered there and then whilst myself and a few others ordered from the bar to not cause any complications at the end with the bill. 

At the end of our meal when the bill came, all the girls paid for their drinks, and there was a service charge left on the bill, now I will be brutally honest, I will hardly ever pay a service charge as you pay enough money when out for a meal and as much as staff may deserve tips, this is something hardly anyone will pay unless they like to throw their money about. Now the girls kindly asked to take the service charge off as you do not have to pay this, the waitress then went to speak to a manager with the receipt and came back with no manager or receipt and asked us for the receipt. 
Once the girls said they didn't have it as the waitress took it, the waitress seemed to have a slight attitude towards the girls, as there was also outstanding payment, when everything was paid for already. This was then escalated by the waitress being rather personally rude to us girls, and a manager had to take over. Everyone has bad days, but never have I entered a restaurant to such service as this and the fact we were customers and this action was taken. I'm sorry for you all to read this as I honestly had such high hopes for this beautiful venue!

The Botanist Coventry

Overall, the drinks were lovely, food I honestly wouldn't go for again and service from staff members should of been so much better. Maybe it was because the staff didn't have enough time to be trained, which is understandable, but there is no exception whatsoever for a staff member to target a customer in such a personal way. I would say visit The Botanist Coventry, but only for drinks in my case, as it has such a chill vibe and lovely drinks but slow service.

To finish things off, I'd give Drinks 8/10 - 2 points off being the prices. Food 6/10 due to food being cold, expensive and the portion sizes not big enough. Lastly, Service 5/10 due to how slow we were being served, the lack of respect to customers and the fact that the staff should be trained better - this doesn't go to all staff as a lot of them were lovely, but some needed extra training. As a lot of the time when people were waiting to be served, the staff were standing around when customers should be being served.

I really hoped for this review to be so much better as The Botanist is such a lovely place, it honestly needs so much improvements within the place and service. I'd say The Botanist is a better place to go for drinks on a night out rather than food. I do hope you enjoyed reading this review, and hope you check the place out for yourself as it's honestly worth going in and seeing the place for yourself to get your own opinion!

Thank you for reading!



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9 comments :

  1. Amazing pictures, such a shame about the service! xx

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  2. Oh wow I remember reading this when you posted it and I was gobsmacked when reading. Then I went a few nights back and I understand what you're saying, especially after the service.

    Let's put it this way, The Botanist definitely isn't my scene. That and I like having money. :P

    I love your honesty sweet, that's the best quality in a blogger. <3

    https://theremightbecoffee.wordpress.com/

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    Replies
    1. The service definitely needs a massive improvement! As well as the prices to be dropped! Aw thank you! I have and always will be honest within my reviews and content in itself!

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  3. Such a shame that the over all feeling after the meal ruined the positives. I loved the bar, but honestly would not eat there again

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  4. I feel like The Botanist's only saving grace is that it's so darn pretty; but I will make a not of the slow service and disappointing food... I guess I'll only go for cocktails and, as true blogger style, for photos!

    Lizzie // Hello Lizzie Bee

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    Replies
    1. Yes cocktails and photos in the right light is good in there!

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  5. I definitely loved their cocktails and will be going back for cocktails at some point but probably not for food anytime soon.


    Gemma
    Www.justgem.co.uk

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