The best restaurants serving French food in Dartford South East

We had an awful experience at Cotes, Bluewater on 21 November 2024 in the evening. It was a quiet evening with minimal people inside. We waited for 10 minutes to be seated at the door and was not greeted, we were stared at by several staff who were standing at the front of the bar talking and we stared back to get attention, however we were ignored. Being heavily pregnant, I could not stand up anymore and had to go inside and select our own seats. When we selected our own seats, we were still not greeted again, but stared at again by the same staff who were having a catch- up at the bar. After 10 minutes, someone came over and told us to move, explained I am not moving as I am now conformable and our previous issues at the door were ignored. They were persistent we moved to a more crowded area with lower seats and not conformable for a pregnant person and we refused. Customers should be able to choose their own seats. They seem more interested in getting us to move than greeting us and taking our order. We finally got to the order stage and the drinks and food arrived quickly. The portion sizes were small and overpriced, but we knew we had to order additional sides. Our bill did not arrive after 20 minutes of waiting for it and again the staff were busy chatting at the bar than to bring it over to us. We had to walk over to the bar and told them to bring it over. We refused to pay the service charge as the service was extremely poor. It seems here, staff having a catch- up and chatting is more important than providing a service at this place. This was meant to be our last time of going out in the evening before the baby arrived. Cotes has ruined this experience. We will never be returning.

I visited this establishment on my birthday with three of my family members. We all had a really lovely time, the food was excellent as was the service from the staff working at that time. I took a note of the name of our waitress but sadly lost the paper it was written on. I do remember it began with a B & she had dark hair. She was very attentive throughout our visit.