I reviewed this restaurant almost two years ago (January 2014) and gave it five stars. In the intervening time, I've returned on multiple occasions. Each time, the restaurant was a little less outstanding with regard to quality of the food. The last two times (once in July and once this evening in September) have been poor; this last visit was just unacceptable.
This summer, I had a starter, main, and dessert at a very early evening dinner. The starter must have been unremarkable, because I don't remember it. I ordered the minted pea risotto for my main...and it was rather crunchy every few bites. Meh. I saved my appetite for the brandy snap fruit mousse dessert. When it came time to order, however, the server said that they did not have any apricots to make the dessert. I ordered the white chocolate berry cheesecake and brought it back to my flat for a late night snack. It was good...not amazing....but yummy enough that I happily ate it.
This time, I got the tomato & red onion salad, the 'five bean and veg chilli with wild rice accompanied with corn chips, sour cream and chive dip'. The onion & tomato (not the other way around!) salad was incredibly pungent. Nothing remarkable. I had to wait a good while for the main course to be delivered. I first noticed that there was white sticky rice with the meal, not wild rice--wild rice would have had protein in it (important for a vegetarian/vegan diner!). As I began to eat the 'chilli', I realized that not only were there not five different kinds of beans...there were NO beans in the dish. When the server came over to ask me how everything was, I told her I was disappointed that there were no beans in my five bean chilli as I had hoped for the protein (that is a primary reason I ordered this dish instead of one of the other mains). She went back to the kitchen and was told that the order of beans had not been delivered (the second time in a row I'd been to the restaurant and a crucial component of a menu item 'had not been delivered'). Now, I can somewhat understand running out of a perishable food at the end of a busy evening, but running out of a canned or dried non-perishable food item? That is just poor planning; proper pantry management would have had the chef ordering new supplies when the beans were low....not gone. Also, the dollop of plain sour cream was certainly not a 'sour cream and chive DIP'! The corn chips were good, though....that is about the only thing about the meal that actually matched the menu description.
Finally, I chose to order the white chocolate berry cheesecake and take it back to my flat again (I had never eaten my dessert *in* the restaurant). No, I wasn't allowed to. Apparently within the last month, they have learned that they are not allowed to let people take food from the restaurant. Disappointed, I left and picked up a pudding on the way back to my flat.
There are too many other good restaurants in the area that are vegetarian/vegan friendly. I will not be returning to Blue Bistro when I am in Coventry for business. read more
