We had been tempted by an offer I saw online for an opportunity to try out two courses from their new a la carte menu for £14.

Knowing that the restaurant was not cheap we thought this seemed like a great deal and a good excuse for us to venture further away from Earlsfield for once.

We arrived early and thought we’d have a drink in the bar first. It was deserted but as it was only 6.45pm that wasn’t a shock.

However, despite the fact we were the only ones in there, the service was really awful.

It took over 10 minutes for us to order our drinks and once we had, it then took another 15 before they arrived and that was only after I asked for them to be brought over from the bar where they had been sitting.

It was acknowledged that the service had been poor by the front of house manager who said the service charge would be taken off which was a nice gesture. We assumed it was a small blip and the evening would improve from here. We were wrong.

Things went rapidly downhill when we got to our table. Obviously we didn’t need to see a food menu but it took 10 minutes for a drinks menu to arrive and another 10 for us to order our wine. It was at this point that I had to ask what we would be eating as no one had said anything.

The waitress did a very poor job of selling it to us – “chicken with sugar snap peas and jasmine rice” was the wording she used for the main course. With all of the beautiful food coming out around us we couldn’t help but be disappointed by this Chinese takeaway-like dish.

Our wine finally arrived as we finished our starters – a small salad with pepper, sugar snap peas and a soy and peanut dressing.

Our main courses didn’t arrive for 20 minutes and again the waitress apologised to us, she said there was a large party upstairs and staff were stretched. However, the tables around us did not seem to be experiencing the same wait. It made us feel like because we had booked under the deal, we were not a priority.

The evening ended up being a huge disappointment and we felt we needed to say something.

I spoke to the manager the following day who has only been in the job for a few weeks. He explained that our concerns about poor service and the apparent mis-selling of the ‘deal’ matched his own.

He reassured us that he is getting things back on track and has invited us back again in the future.

On that occasion we’re going to be eating the delicious-looking sushi and tempura!

Some people might think we’re crazy to go back when there are so many other good restaurants out there but when I started this blog I knew I didn’t want to slate places. That is why we will give Gilgamesh a second chance.