My wife took me out for a quiet birthday celebration at the newly opened Sixty Six last night; sadly the experience was deeply disappointing.
The menu offers fairly straight forward, hearty cuisine. Scallops and Black Pudding, Chorizo Sausage with Rustic Mash, and Devilled Kidneys are three of the five starters (I can't remember the rest). The main feature of the menu (along with Burgers, Ribs and Pizza) is of course the steaks; Ribeye, Sirloin, Rump and Fillet available in weights from 8oz to 24oz depending on cut.
This is where the problems start. A product needs to offer good value if it is going to appeal to customers including food. By this I don't mean that it has to be cheap, but if you are going to attach a high price tag to something then the quality had better be fantastic.
The pricing of the menu at the Sixty Six puts it on a par with the Rocksalt Restaurant in Folkestone, the Marquis at Alkham and the Michael Caines fine dining restaurant at the Abode Hotel in Canterbury.
After a good deal of faffing with our drinks order (the waitress didn't know what beer they had, or which wines were available by the glass)
We ordered:
Starter
Scallops and Black Pudding 9-10
Chorizo Sausage with Rustic Mash 6-7
Main
Burger 12
"Thrice cooked" Chips 3.20
8oz Fillet Steak 18-19
"Thrice cooked" Chips 3.20
Sauce 2
Cheap this place isn't!
Ok so lets get down to it. The Chorizo and "Rustic Mash" was well prepared and tasty. The sausage was lightly charred with a rich spicy flavour and the mash was smooth, light and buttery (although I fail to see what was "rustic" about it), very pleased. My wife however, was not so fortunate. The scallops had been destroyed and were so rubbery and chewy that she actually left half of them uneaten.
I must come clean and say that as soon as I picked up the menu my hopes weren't high. Why? Spelling mistakes! If you're advertising "Argentina Beef" as opposed to "Argentinian Beef" and "Sprial" cut rather than "Spiral" cut then something's wrong. You obviously don't have an eye for detail and if you can't check your menu before you send it to the printers then how can I trust you to check that my food is cooked properly.
Anyway, I digress. The burger was very good (although for 12 it should be) and cooked as requested, medium rare. The steak was cooked rare as asked and was fine, not great, but satisfactory. The supposedly "thrice cooked" chips were awful, truly the worst I have ever had. A greasy, glistening pile of flaccid, barely cooked potato. These were certainly not the "thrice cooked" fluffy, crunchy, golden chips of dreams. I complained, they were replaced; the replacements were only a fraction less awful.
We declined dessert and ordered coffee. Behind us a couple was complaining that they were still waiting for their drinks.
Service is not quick here and our two-course meal was spread over 2 hours.
After asking for the bill three times it eventually arrived and I was pleased to see that the chips and a round of drinks had been knocked off the bill reducing the total to 59, a fairer price but still too high for the quality of food and the slow, disorganised service (forgot to mention no steak knife, the waitress didn't clear the starter plates away before arriving with the main and a nearby couple had no cutlery to eat their dessert with).
As we were leaving the party of four next to us were just about to pay their bill and were complaining to the waitress about the quality of the food / price. "24 for a steak and most of it's fat" were the last words I overheard as I left the restaurant.
Bottom line. Fix the chips, organise the front of house staff properly and reduce the prices by 15-20%.
This is part of my site The 'Gerald that I built in a fever of excitement when we first moved here sometime in '04. I'd been a regular visitor for a while before that but I am technically one of those Down From Londons you get now. This site was a lot more dynamic with a calendar of events and voting for favourite venues and things, and I hear it was a useful reference for those who were moving to the area. Now I've moved out of Folkestone again (though just a couple of miles) it doesn't get as much love as it used to. Ironic really as Folkestone itself is becoming the exciting place we always thought it was just about to. I am not Gerald BTW, the name comes from a pretend newspaper in an episode of The Day Today or something, the Portsmouth Gerald, and how there is a local paper here called the Folkestone Herald. Puns like this are great aren't they? Do get in touch if you have anything to offer, email anythign @ this domain, or try @folkestone or @pauly on Twitter.