Restaurant Review: Carluccio's at The Water's Edge, Brindleyplace
Carluccio's, The Water's Edge, Brindleyplace, Birmingham. T: 0121 633 9262
Like most chaps, I am unsure about my cholesterol score and blood pressure, just as I don’t know my best side for portrait photography and am ignorant about what I’d like to do when I grow up.
However, I am certain of this: I have never knowingly turned down a glass of wine.
So lunch at the new Carluccio’s in Brindleyplace represented a first for me. Yes, I refused alcoholic refreshment.
Have I, you may be asking, joined the temperance movement? Perhaps I am a lush?
Sadly, none of these explanations is accurate, although the latter could be considered borderline. No, the reason for turning down wine was good old-fashioned chaotic service, the perennial bugbear of the diner-outer.
I’ve had a double whammy of poor service in two successive meals. Both restaurants have been Italian in inspiration, lurching in delivery and big named (the other was Jamie’s Italian).
At Carlo’s, I ordered a glass of white wine with my starter, and having finished that course, asked for a glass of red with my main course. I waited. The course turned up. I ate it. Still I waited for the wine.
When it turned up, it was the wrong wine. It was white, which wasn’t all right. I told the waitress she could take it back because I had finished the modest spaghetti and clams with which I planned to quaff it.
“All right, I’ll make sure it’s not on the bill,” she said.
I thought that was brilliant – not charging me for something I hadn’t had. It could catch on.
Of course, the waitress could have said: “I’m so sorry. There’s no excuse. We’ve been rubbish. Please have this wine with our compliments.”
But she’d have had to run that past the restaurant manager, who’d have to get approval signed off by head office. A second waiter explained the machine that stacks up drinks orders had gone doolally and eaten up the chits. Maybe it got cheesed off waiting. That can happen.
Naturally, our dessert order was forgotten. A lukewarm, under-powered espresso and a tea arrived, were drunk, and Sally and I wiggled our fingers.
The waiter asked if we would like anything else. I said pudding would be nice.
“Oh,” he said, and rushed off.
We ate the puddings when they arrived. They were puddingy and, if you are that interested, can be found on the list at www.carluccios.com.
