The Plaza

This has to be the worst dining experience I have ever endured. The warning signs were clearly visble from the 3 courses for £8.50 menu and the pop music playing into the street. But as 8 of us had just completed the London to Brighton bike ride The Plaza was one of the closest so called seafood restaurants next to our Hotel.

The menu was a joke and the food that appeared was laughable. I ordered scallops for £9 and received three overcooked queen scallops on some torn up iceberg. Absolute rip-off!

Due to the lack of choice on the menu I thought I'd play it safe with the mains and order battered cod loin and chips. When it eventually arrived it was no surprise to me that the fish was still raw in the middle along with the two other cod and chips that had arrived at our table. Three of us decided to go hungry and not have a replacement. My girlfriend ordered mussels that still had beards and half the dish was full of broken shells.

This restaurant is a joke and should be closed down or knocked down. They even billed us £25 service charge which we stupidly paid. You have been warned!!
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Roy
Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Two of us walked past the Plaza Saturday night, thought it looked good, went back for Moules for Sunday lunch. Now, we eat out a lot and I was a restaurateur for 17 years. Nothing could have prepared us for the unbelievably bad way the lunch went......

1. We waited over half an hour for our moules at £6.95 each which were almost cold when they arrived. We had had to order bread separately at £2.35.

2. we waited another 40 minutes for our second course, a grilled fillet of plaice in butter and parsley sauce and a dressed crab salad. The plaice arrived several minutes before the dressed crab salad , swimming in butter, and was cold by the time the salad arrived. The dressed crab salad arrived in a small bowl which looked like any side salad but no sign of the crab. I sent it back and it was returned to me tipped out on a larger plate. About a dessert spoon of crab meat had been stirred into chopped lettuce and that, I was told, was a dressed crab salad. I returned it and asked for the bill and asked to speak to the manager.

3. The manager/owner (I didn't know it at the time who they were) was clearly involved in all of this and had been standing nearby, in the doorway. I had to get up and ask to speak to the manager, at this time thinking "they can't possibly know what is going on or they wouldn't let it happen." No, she did know and told me that it was a dressed crab salad. I argued that it should come in a shell with a salad on the same plate. No she said, that was frozen and their crab meat came from a tub and that was the proper thing.

The salad would have been £14 and the plaice was £13. I concur with the findings of other writers, the food was rubbish and although the waiters/resses were eager and fairly smart, the service overall was lousy between the delays from the kitchen and the inexperience of the serving staff - I suspect they don't keep staff (or customers) long.

This restaurant clearly trades on passing trade - don't get hooked like we did! A complete waste of a sunny day!
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Jackie Nunns
Sunday, June 08, 2008

Today we went on a visit to Brighton, and we were starving, we came across the plaza and it looked rather nice from the outside so we went in!.. Big mistake!.. We made our order, no joke it took them an hour to bring our food out to us and thats only coz we reminded them twice, you're prob thinkin well why didnt you leave, well it did cross my mind about 10 times but i thought no why should we go, and i wanted to see what the food was like.

Well the food was as bad as the service. Then it took us to ask them twice for the bill!. I mean what a joke, then they asked for a service charge, it takes a lot to wind me up but that topped it off!
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Ria
Saturday, May 03, 2008

Unbelieveable!!! Saturday night so called live music bad food bouncer as waiter this could not get any worse,whats happened to the Plaza we loved?
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paul d
Sunday, April 27, 2008

Made the mistake of going here for sunday breakfst we were in a group for the weekend had a good meal the night before in the restaurant next door,thought we would try this one the breakfast took nearly 30 mins to do there were only three tables the service was awful the decour very plush more of a restaurant thats fallen on hard times!!! dont go there.
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louise
Thursday, April 10, 2008

ok im going to keep this short 1 party of ten 1 bad manager 1 evil battleaxe owner and 6 sick look out for this resturant getting shutdown

a god send
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david more
Tuesday, February 26, 2008

well what can i say about our time in the plaza it felt like forever for a resturant to charge excive amounts for warm beer and unatractive bland mush they call food then have the blind check to ask (not ask enforce) a service charge its daylight robbery i mean even dick turpin wore a mask. not here you get a strange little man hidding behind a desk and some cragy old bat who is for sure off her head we wasted 3 hours of our life to get 2 starters and 2 main courses was still starving because half was not even edible id rather stick my fork in my eye than have to endore that again.
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paul drapper
Tuesday, February 26, 2008

On Sunday 27.01.08 we endured long delays, undercooked food, dodgy looking soup, rude and uncaring staff and the manager from hell. Given the choice of a free meal in The Plaza and paying for fish and chips on the Pier, I would take the Pier every time.
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Philip Rushe
Tuesday, February 05, 2008

was in Brighton last week with all of my family to celebrate my 25th wedding anniversary. We planned to have a meal for 10 people and naturally wanted to get somewhere nice and also convenient to other people who would be coming on the day so on the Sunday we decided to try this restaurant.

This had to be the biggest mistake that we have ever made. After waiting for about 30 minutes for the starters to arrive – four of them came out and we were left waiting for a further 15 minutes before some of the other ones arrived – despite asking three different people one of which was the owner. One of the party ordered soup which we were told was carrot and coriander but when it arrived it was literally a tin of chopped tomatoes thrown into a bowl with a bit of fresh coriander thrown in for good measure.

We were again left waiting for the main courses to come out and the steaks that were ordered well done came out raw and again had to be sent back. They were returned literally within a couple of minutes and had without doubt just been chucked into the microwave to finish them off.

Onto the next course and while the desserts came out we were left with no cutlery and again had to ask two people the second of which brought it over to us.

When paying the bill (which I might add was not particularly cheap) I told the waitress who had been serving us that I was not happy with the meal and wanted some form of reduction in the bill. She said I would have to see the owner who was not there at the moment but would be back shortly. Eventually after being ignored for a good half hour (and with the owner standing by the till) I went up myself and argued my case with her and her sidekick who was behind the counter.

I have never come across such an ignorant person and how she could possibly be still in business is beyond me. In the middle of talking to me she suddenly went off to deal with new customers who were coming in the door. I was gobsmacked to say the least and asked the guy behind the counter did she just walk off while I was in the middle of talking to her. He replied that she had gone to see to customers. I replied that I was also a customer and had been in the middle of talking to her.

To finish off the owner reluctantly deducted £10 off the bill which while I was not particularly happy with decided that it was better to take that and get out of the place to concentrate on trying to find a decent restaurant for our anniversary on the Tuesday.

The whole meal had taken over 5 hours. We arrived at 2.00 and left well after 7.00 p.m. and most of that time was spent either waiting for the food to arrive, for cutlery to be brought out to us or disputing the service and the bill with the owner.
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Tuesday, February 05, 2008

I have just clicked on here was looking for the plazas telephone number to book a table for july 08. The reveiws on this site are unbeleivable. we dont get a lot of time off but when we can steel away for the weekend brighton is one of the places i like best and the plaza is brilliant. Excellent food, lovely people, manager is ALWAYS on dutyover seeing everything and we are always made welcome. music is great its a brilliant place for those in the 30-50 bracket who feel too old for night clubs but still like a great night nout with good music.

Dont take any notice of these reviews all of these people obviously had been drinking their superb cocktailsand very suffering a much deserved nhangover or memory lapse when they wrote them.
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sheena parsons
Sunday, January 13, 2008