We were served by a young waitress, who was rather offhand from the start, and another waitress, who was friendly. We ordered from the festive menu, and the food was tasty. When the bill arrived, it was missing a number of items, which I drew to their attention. The revised bill contained a supplementary charge which had not been listed on the menu. Having told them about a large undercharge, I did not feel like being overcharged. But when I queried this, the young waitress kept arguing that it had to be paid, giving different reasons relating to a variety of menus which did not apply to us. When I insisted they actually look at the festive dinner menu where they could see it was not mentioned, they eventually grudgingly agreed to remove the charge. But even while taking payment the waitress kept repeating that while they were letting us off this time we should have paid the charge, and was in general extremely rude and unpleasant, not even bothering with a perfunctory thank you.
I spoke with the woman at the front desk about our dissatisfaction with the service, and while she apologised, she repeated a number of times that nobody had previously complained about the supplementary charge, as if implying that we were being unreasonable in asking about a charge which had not been on the menu they gave us. Moreover, the issue was not the small amount in question, but the rude and antagonistic they had handled the situation, becoming very unfriendly when we queried the charge, keeping on arguing that we should pay and not bothering to apologise when it turned out that it was due to their mistake. All this was particularly irritating when we had just drawn their attention to a much larger mistake they had made in undercharging us. I regret that I did not ask for the service charge (which is automatically added) to be removed.
This is not the type of service we are accustomed to in Edinburgh restaurants. We have eaten out at various Howie's restaurants over the years, but we won't be back.
