David Jenkins' Weblog

Graffiti at the Hotel Felix; 29 May 10 31 May 10

The wife says that I’m too critical about people asking meaningless redundant questions. One that really annoys me is the one whereby a waiter interrupts your meal and asks ‘is everything OK?’. My standard response is, unless I’m on my best behaviour, ‘that’s a useless question because it won’t give you any useful data in return’. Unless of course the answer would have been ‘no’ which is fairly damning.

Surely restaurants should be aspiring to something more than simply OK. In which case they should be getting feedback related to such an aspiration and  not simply benchmarking themselves against a mediocre average. So far nobody’s asked me ‘is everything exceptional?’

Another is ‘how may I help you?’. Generally it’s pretty obvious how I can be helped and so it was at the Graffiti  restaurant last Saturday. It should be clear when you present your self at the entrance to a restaurant that you want a meal. There are a bundle of other more useful questions than ‘how may I help you?’.

Anyway it was another CEN £10 meal job and we were there to celebrate number 1 son’s birthday (followed by a Hawaiian themed party on Sunday evening).

Graffiti is at the Hotel Felix which is a nice boutiquey hotel in the north of Cambridge. It looks nice, it’s in its own grounds with easy parking. And inside it’s elegant.

The deal was slightly better than last week. This time the standard price for 2 courses was £12.95. However the servings were much smaller but that fitted the style of the place and was not a cause for complaint.  We had 3 crab meat and avocado starters and believe me they could manage with just one avocado for a week with such servings. However it was good.

The main course selection was chicken Kiev, hake or a veggie. We had one chicken Kiev, not such a small portion, and 2 hakes. All perfectly good. There’s also an excellent list of wines by the glass.

All well and good so what’s not to like about the Graffiti? Maybe it was the rather loud 60s music when we entered; although someone must have complained because that became cooler and quieter later. Maybe it was the long wait between getting the menu and being asked for our desert order; that put us off so we didn’t stay. Or maybe it was the pretence of ‘we’re a classy, formal restaurant’ when it was just Saturday lunch with a load of punters using their CEN vouchers. Not terminal, I will go back, but please, Graffiti, lighten up a little.