Cafe Rouge St. Albans
Inspired by our friends across the Channel, Cafe Rouge promises quite a lot but delivers very little.
Located in an art deco building, formerly home to a swimming bath which I perhaps incorrectly assumed had been a swimming bath (see the comment left here – thanks for the correction Sam!), there’s no doubt that the decor is interesting and stylish.
However, the service is slow and quite patchy – with not just us but a number of friends saying that they spent a good deal of their time trying to grab the attention of staff who, when they do turn up, aren’t always friendly.
The food too was, at least in our experience, a disappointment in that it was less French bistro and more, well, a poor English interpretation of what a French bistro might be.
We really wanted to like Cafe Rouge. Afterall, it is one of the most stylish restaurants in St. Albans. Sadly, Cafe Rouge St. Albans just doesn’t meet the high expectations we had of it.
GeoData
Popularity: 7% [?]
That fabulous building used to be the Ryder seed hall, and the Comfort hotel next to it was the HQ of Ryder seeds. Samuel Ryder is now best known for starting the Ryder Cup golf match, which was first played on the Verulam course in St Albans. I’m not aware of the old seed hall ever having been a swimming bath, but I suppose it could have been at some point.
Part of the Ryder seed hall (what is now Cafe Rouge)was for many years the Royal Mail Post Ofice canteen, serving breakfast and lunch to all the lovely posties of this fair city (of which I was one for 20 years). Previous to that, it was a greenhouse for Ryder’s seeds (but boy – it was hot working in the old building – which was used as a sorting office in the 70s and 80s. The building that is now the Comfort Hotel was also part of the Post Office set up – mostly being the admin. side of things
They must have pulled their socks up recently. My wife & I were there last night (11-8-07). The service was friendly and pretty fast, and the food was well presented and tasty. The bill wasn’t excessive, so we’ll be going back.
That’s good news – we always like to hear that things have improved somewhere. Glad you had a good experience Roger.
I am proud to have worked at cafe rouge for 9 years, starting as a waitres and now working as one of the managers. I am proud of our service and passionate about our food. I believe our service to be of a high standard, and even on exra busy shifts try to maintain our quality of service and food. I am sorry to read the negative comments. We have a huge amount of lovely regulars who love our friendly service and great food. So please anyone that has read this negative comment and has put you off visiting us please give us a visit and we will try to impress you.
THANKYOU GILL