Aj's Cafe in Falkirk

Overpriced, needs a real menu. While nothing wrong with the quality of the food, the combinations just didn’t work and resulted in a taste mess. I think the “chef” maybe needs to taste his own food. Had the Moroccan lamb. Which came cold, not helped by the ice cold cuscus which seemingly just came out of the fridge, buried under that was my single sprig of broccoli, again cold. While cuscus can be eaten cold, then that’s a cold dish…everything else should be cold, you can’t mix it with lamb and gravy. Add to it fresh mint sprig that overpowered the entire dish, destroying the lamb flavour. When you charge £25 for this dish at the bar rather than the restaurant…your delusions of “restaurant” quality foods stands out. It’s a £12 dish at best and even then it’s below parr. It just doesn’t work. The lamb was fine, but for the love of god, put it with traditional hot veg and maybe some roast potatoes.

Nearly 20 min to get baked potato. Very inexperienced staff, made latte then mixed that with spoon. Bake potato tasted half cooked, looked horrible and tested horrible, no salad or any side.

Don’t come if you have any kind of schedule to keep to. Waited 5 minutes to be seated while we watched staff chatting 10 feet from us. Took 35 minutes for an order of 3 coffees and 2 scones to arrive after sitting on a counter for 5 minutes getting cold as wait staff basically wandering around in a dwam and in no hurry to do much of anything. Pretty brutal experience.

I was having a couple of pints here when the manager started talking about a carbon dioxide leak in the cellar, I am a gas tester in my professional life so I warned them no one should enter the cellar without the oxygen levels being checked as carbon dioxide is an asphyxiant in high enough concentrations. She started getting agitated and telling me she was a trained pub employee and that they had sensors, I asked what sensors and when were they calibrated. She refused to tell me and kicked me out. I'm going to assume she had carbon monoxide sensors in the basement and doesn't know the difference between carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. I have made a formal complaint to the HSE.

Warning! The cookie dough was alright but not what I expected. Definitely order two if you expect a bigger size than the photo 😂. Place is great but I just wish this was better, could hardly taste the sauce either. The server was nice though, only realized it was like this when I got home.