The Table Cafe’s Christmas "feast" left me feeling underwhelmed - review
The Table Cafe has launched a festive menu packed with potential, but the night I visited revealed uneven service and inconsistent dishes.
The Table Cafe’s new Christmas menu starts on a sour note before the food even arrived, as we were seated in a cramped corner away from the main crowd, which reminded me more of my days in detention than at Christmas dinners.
It created an immediate sense of separation that never really lifted as everyone else was seated closer, which added to the “togetherness” part of the festive season.
The slow service also added to the feeling, with almost 15 minutes passing before I was acknowledged by a waiter, let alone able to place our order.
For a cafe/restaurant that calls itself The Table, the table service felt surprisingly abysmal.
As for the food, the canapés we started the night with arrived with mixed results.
The pigs in blankets, while nice, tasted like the frozen ones you get in Iceland, but the chestnut falafel bites were genuinely enjoyable, and I easily could have demolished a bowl of them.
The salmon on crunchy beetroot sat somewhere in the middle, enjoyable enough but not distinct enough to leave a lasting impression.
The starters followed this same unpredictable pattern.
The chicken liver and brandy parfait was pleasant, and the vegetables added a welcome crispness, yet the dish leaned more towards feeling like a festive biscuit spread than a true restaurant-quality starter.
The smoked duck breast was thick, fresh and visually appealing, but the sauce it bathed in was disappointingly flavourless, giving the dish an unfinished quality.
The beetroot-cured salmon pairing was one of the stronger plates, offering fresh fish and a dried beetroot crunch that brought a satisfying variation of texture.
Meanwhile, the caramelised onion tart was perfectly serviceable but lacked depth or character, making it the sort of dish you forget almost as soon as it's cleared from the table.
Then, it was time for the Christmas roast.
The roast turkey with chestnut stuffing and sausage was a strong return to form, and as someone who doesn’t particularly care for turkey, I was impressed by how moist, flavourful and satisfying it was, especially how it was wrapped in bacon.
The roasted vegetables were also a surprising high point; they tasted genuinely homemade in the best possible way and paired beautifully with the gravy, delivering the kind of comforting flavour that Christmas dining should be built on.
The potatoes, unfortunately, didn’t reach the same standard, lacking any crispness and tasting more boiled than roasted, which left them feeling like an afterthought on the plate.
The portion size was just right, too, leaving me comfortably full rather than overwhelmed, which I didn’t expect as we were given bits and pieces of all menu items rather than just having one dish per person.
The veggie Wellington turned out to be another standout, with its perfectly flaky pastry and generous filling of roasted vegetables, so good that it made me question why I’ve never had one for Christmas before and why I’d hesitate to enjoy Christmas dinner without one again.
The herb-crusted salmon, offered as a Christmas main, never quite justified its place in a festive line-up, and although the broccoli and butter sauce helped carry it, it still fell flat compared to the salmon in the earlier courses.
For dessert, the sticky toffee pudding was disappointingly firm and overwhelmingly rich, the kind of dense sweetness that stops you after the very first bite.
The eggnog trifle, in contrast, was delightful, creamy and flavourful, though it became slightly too liquid for a dessert that should hold its layers.
My festive cocktail felt similarly unbalanced, with what I assume was a heavy dose of cinnamon overpowering everything else until the drink tasted more like a rogue shot than a thoughtful Christmas concoction.
The tiny candy cane nestled inside the glass was undeniably cute, but it wasn’t quite enough, and we then opted for the Bailey’s Oreo milkshake that was infinitely more festive and fabulous.
By the time we reached the end of the meal, The Table Cafe’s Christmas menu felt like a series of promising ideas undermined by inconsistent execution and service issues that were impossible to ignore.
There were genuine highlights scattered throughout, but they were buried beneath enough missteps to make it difficult to fully settle into the festive spirit.
If a Christmas meal is meant to feel warm, inviting and cohesive, The Table Cafe still has a long way to go before its seasonal offering lives up to its potential.