The Gateway Restaurant

What a rip off. Not having visited the Garden since the opening of the John Hope entrance I ventured north from Northumberland last week. The attractive and well built entrance with great views and facilities is let down by the restaurant or more precisely by the cost of some of the items on the menu. About to order a croissant to go with the coffee for my daughter and myself I stopped mid utterance - £4 for one or a Danish Pastry. Obviously the management take the visitors for fools who will easily part with their money. The price at Kew -£2.50 - pricey or St.Pancras - £1.50 realistic.
Great view but overpriced.

Very nice place and splendid settings but the food is terrible and very expensive. We had the children's menu...a joke: sticks vegetables (4 sticks with sauce) uncooked sausages and smash potatoes!£5. We tested their new menu: soup of the day (typical ready to eat food from any supermarket), thai pork style: dried pork and tasteless vegetables , chorrizo and poached egg , well my poached egg was cooked...so it was simply salad and cooked chorizzo. Ice cream was served in a poorly manner. I am giving a very bad review for the food. It really tested like school food, which was hard to admit considering the place.But soon we saw the waitress wearing a "Sodexo" badge.... no more worried why the food had this taste ! Same on RBGH.

My advice would be to go their to have a look at the splendid interior design...and a coffee :)

I thoroughly reccomend a visit to the gardens for anyone coming to Edinburgh however I must warn others about the service (or lack of) in the new 'John Hope Gateway' restaurant. The staff are very rude and look down their noses at (1) those with small children and (2) lone customers. After a lovely spring morning walk around the gardens taking in the snowdrops and other lovely sights, I decided to stop for a spot of lunch and an hour or so doing some work on my laptop. I had noticed previously that the new coffee bar/restaurant had wifi facilities so I decided to check it out. after ascending the stair leading up to the restaurant I was greeted by a rather serious looking female staff member, when I mentioned my desire for a coffee and light lunch (as well as to use my laptop for a while) her reply could not have been more negative -continuing in the first instance with 'ok although 'we have nowhere for you to plug in the laptop' her reply left me with the impression that they really didn't like to encourage the use of laptops in the 'restaurant' (so why advertise free wifi?) The waitress then sat me down at a small table right beside the staircase and when I asked if i could sit further away (my reason being to have a quiet little corner away from the noise of the foyer downstairs so that I could do my work) she replied in the negative stating that all other tables were booked -a blatant lie as it was late morning and there were many empty tables and I observed that many other couples coming in after me were given the choice to sit at other ends of the premises. This really angered me as it was so obvious and made me feel ostrocised for being on my own. I was so annoyed that when they came to take my order I only asked for a coffee and skipped the lunch as I did not see why I should pay £5 for a sandwich when I couldn't even sit where I wanted to. I also noticed other staff being rude to an elderly couple infront of me who had a young child with them. I have been a visitor to the gardens for many years and really felt quite insulted. I will continue visiting the gardens although will avoid the 'john hope gateway' services in future, I advise others to do the same.

I have eaten here twice. It's a beautiful place, with lovely wooden furniture and great design generally. It's lovely being able to look out of the floor to ceiling windows on to the Gardens. However, on both occasions the food has been disappointing, with the exception of the puddings, which have been very good. The service, whilst smiling and friendly, has been slow and inefficient.

The early posts were concerned that the ill-named Prestige Catering would waste this opportunity in a sea of pork pies and sausage rolls. If only. No, what we have is an 'aspirational' menu, modern British pretentiousness, with gestures towards sourcing and right-on references to sustainable fishing. Unfortunately the food that arrives seems to have come from Costco, left to hang around, then been assembled - certainly not cooked - by numpties. Grilled mackerel was a truly extraordinary object - grey-brown, rubbery, apparently grilled a few days earlier and quickly microwaved, with a strange, vaguely toxic, aftertaste. Gnocchi were grey (a colour theme?) and tasted, I was told, of wallpaper paste. It's not especially cheap. For the same price you could eat brilliant food at a dozen places within a mile or so. A disastrous piece of business for the Botanics.

Three of us thought we would try the new restaurant on Good Friday. We arrived at 12:30 without a reservation but as the place was basically empty we thought there would be the possibility of fitting us in, especially as the place seats well over 100. However, we were informed that they could only take us at around 3:00 as all the tables were booked. Booked by ghosts.

Very disappointed. booked a table for High Tea for family birthday only to be told on arrival 12 days later this was no longer on the menu. Table was in the middle of the concourse. Restaurant seats 120 so a bit like a school dining room. Staff offered us sausage and mash. We left. no reply as yet from letter sent on 26th October.

Clearly Beechamer is able to predict the future as the Gateway Restaurant only opened to the public on the 7th October! How can you review a restaurant before it has opened? (surely Beechchamer is not a competitor of Prestige Scotland?)
I had lunch last week and the food was great and clearly freshly made on site. The service is a little slow but the staff we very polite.

A one star rating from me, my daughter and a friend with her daughter. The restaurant is in an information/education centre so at least during the day, you can expect there to be children around. We were told that we couldn't order "coffee and a cake" that there was a cafe for that up the hill (yes we know about that overpriced cafe too..). So I checked the menu and sure enough we could order "Afternoon Tea" - the cheapest item on the being being a Scone (with tea or coffee). "Yes of course we can serve you a scone and a coffee, not cake though" - even though slices of cake are clearly available in the same menu... ridiculous!!! Total cost £5.50 each for a scone and a filter coffee (no cafetiere), which wasn't even great coffee, and which the waitress spilled everywhere. "I suppose you'd like me to get you another coffee?" uh, yes please at this price?! Especially as we were overcharged; another waitress added two coffees on top of the £5.50 each.. only realised after we'd walked out (queued for the lift) and didn't have a receipt.

One star for the location. Don't go there for the coffee, scone, afternoon tea or whatever other poncy rubbish they have available.

The setting is nice, could be better in the evening but they really need to get their act sorted out and realise who the majority of clientele during the day are likely to be. Very disappointed; will probably get an overpriced scone up at the cafe as originally directed next time...!

In reference to the previous comment, perhaps you should have visited the restaurant before writing such a biting review of what you expected it to be like. The Gateway menu certainly does not conform to the 'scotish standards' you mention,' with not a saussage roll, pork pie or tomato soup in sight. In fact none of the items you mention are found at the Gateway. Instead the menu features fine food prepared to order. The restaurant does use fruit and vegetables grown in the garden and makes as many items (jam, bread etc) as possible on site in line with its emphasis on ecologically sustainable practices. The new building is a beautiful space and the food is very good - I suggest you visit and see for yourself!

It's too bad that RBGE has entered into a contract with Prestige Catering to run their cafes and restaurants. I think this new centre has such potential. The Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh could really take this new centre all the way, and use the restaurant to teach the public about conservation, healthy eating, sustainability, and self-sufficiency. If you think about all of the gardening expertise available at the RBGE, and all of the space available, why wouldn't they use those resources to produce truly amazing meals made with fruit and veg grown right on site?? With a proper chef (these are incredibly rare inthe UK, but especially in Scotland--!)on board, that could be absolutely amazing. The restaurant could become a destination in itself, a mecca for food lovers from all over.
But no, true to Scottish form, the restaurant is given over to a huge corporation with no motive save for profit. The food is going to be boring, unexciting, and the same junk that is on every cafe and resaurant menu in Scotland. The menu will most definitely feature sausage rolls, haggis, some sort of fish in a bland, greasy sauce, run of the mill, uninspired soups: lentil, tomato, minestrone, beef and bean, carrot and coriander; pork pies, and let's not forget the vegetarian standards...(the most hated menu items ever): macaroni cheese, egg mayo sandwiches, roasted mediterranean vegetable panini. One only has to look at any menu in a Sodexho Prestige venue to see just how boring and horrible it is going to be. And as far as the restaurant being a destination in itself?? I think not. You'll be able to have the same food experince in any bus station, airport, or mall in the UK.