Prompt Corner Restaurant

Prompt Corner, one of the oldest restaurants in Brighton, was a disappointment. The place has great potential with its quirky layout and history but it needs a good clean and a new chef that cares about food as this one obviously doesn’t.

The fish cakes were good, the steak was ok, and the vegetable were poor but sticky serving spoons and greasy dusty salt & pepper pots are unacceptable, as are dehydrated overcooked duck breasts that even a steak knife cannot cut. The second worst meal I’ve had in Brighton in 14 years. They did knock the cost of the duck off the bill but this didn’t compensate for a ruined romantic dinner. We eat out a lot and won't be going back.

If you want to check out the décor, risk a drink at the bar. Otherwise don’t bother.
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Sue - View all reviews by this user
Overall rating
Food 2 | Service 4 | Atmosphere 5 | Value for money 2
Saturday, May 15, 2010

What Can I say....Fab Atmosphere.....Fab Food...Fab Value for Money...Thankyou Prompt Corner you did not Dissapoint we will be back !
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John
Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 9 | Atmosphere 9 | Value for money 10
Saturday, April 24, 2010

We weren’t expecting fine dining from Prompt Corner (judging from other reviews we’d read online) but we reckoned we’d be in for a charming and convivial experience nonetheless. However, on entering my suspicions that we’d be walking into a restaurant set from a Two Ronnies’ sketch were confirmed and the menu was straight from my mother’s 70s Hamlyn All-Colour Cookbook. I have to say the atmosphere was very odd. It was very quiet with only four other couples all of which felt compelled to speak to each other in conspiratorial whispers.

When our waiter gave us a complementary bowl of bread I was rather shocked to see that it was just sliced bread cut in half! If I wasn’t mistaken it was Tesco’s oatmeal batch!

Having placed our order, the starters (prawn cocktail and avocado prawns) arrived about two minutes later and we’d finished them by the time our wine arrived. They were decent enough (although placing prawns on a plate is hardly cooking). The wine, however, was not the white Rioja we’d ordered but a Spanish white from another region entirely. Our waiter didn’t tell us this; I only figured it out when reading the label. Indeed we overheard the waiter telling the table next to us that he didn’t have the wine they’d ordered from the wine list. My girlfriend was sure she’d seen the wine we had on special offer at Waitrose (situated over the road incidentally) for £4 and we were being charged £16.

We both had Beef Wellington for our main course and my girlfriend’s portion lacked in the presentation stakes. The waiter mentioned that the chef was a bit annoyed about how it turned out but the oven wasn’t working properly. Now, if I was a chef who cared about his work, I’d (a) make sure the oven was working before service and (b) start over and dish up something that was worthy of serving! There was no evidence of the pate that the steak was supposedly enveloped in (although surely Beef Wellington should be rolled up in pancetta?) and the meat was overcooked and unseasoned. It looked like a fillet steak in a Cornish pasty. The potatoes were burnt and the veg unappetising. Another table complained about their potatoes but the waiter replied that apparently “the fields are very waterlogged this time of the year”. Surely the correct thing to do would be to replace the potatoes rather than make excuses?

All-in-all we felt that we didn’t want to risk dessert so we asked for the bill. This we had to query as they had overcharged us for the veg, which we had not asked for (we weren’t even told that the mains didn’t come with veg we assumed they would do. The waiter added this on for us and should have let us know when we ordered). We were also unhappy about the wine substitution and didn’t reckon that the meal was worth anywhere near the £57 it came too (including a 10% service charge, which the menu said was to be added voluntarily at our discretion). We asked for these things to be taken into consideration and the waiter disappeared for five minutes and then passed us back the bill which had been only been amended by removing the service and exited quickly back to the kitchen to avoid any confrontation! What a cheek!

To surmise, this could be a charming little place, and there’s nothing wrong with such an outdated menu, but what really let it down was the rude service and the passionless and substandard cooking. The wine list was overpriced, uninspiring and largely unavailable. Just think what £57 (or less) could get you elsewhere.
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Rycycles - View all reviews by this user
Overall rating
Food 2 | Service 2 | Atmosphere 2 | Value for money 2
Monday, February 15, 2010