I thoroughly enjoyed my evening at Haricot's. The menu was well thought out and the food well prepared. Our service was a tiny bit on the slow side but worth the wait. Besides, the atmosphere was comfortable with a touch of the nice side of France so we enjoyed being there. Will definitely be back.

Having made a visit to Haricot's in April ‘12 (pre festival) to check it out for our pending visit in July with a group of 15, we were disappointed and frustrated with the service on 2nd July. On arrival it took 2 requests to get a waiter to take a drinks order. This got worse as the night progressed; it took an hour and a half to finally get our meals and this after 3 requests to the kitchen. We were also able to talk to the chef who commented "we have run out of food twice today". When confronting the front desk we were told that "we are extremely busy tonight and you will just have to wait". It was evident that the restaurant was severely overbooked and that there was very little management input into the setup or in resolving the crisis. We eventually cancelled our dessert and left. It is really a pity because the food was actually pretty good. We should have been more aware of pending problems because in the run up to the festival we spoke to Jenny a couple of times to request the "festival menu" and were finally told (4 days before the start) "I have a crisis here and can't answer you now, goodbye" and she put the phone down on us.

Following an amazing time in Grahamstown with the arts festival going on, a group of friends and myself decided to book in to Haricots for dinner on Saturday 30th June . We found out about the place on the Eat Out website and thought that we should give it a try. Now to clarify, everyone in the group is currently involved in the food industry, myself and one other are fully qualified Chefs. Upon our arrival we could clearly see that they were busy. The waitron (I am presuming now because she was sitting behind the front desk), said that she couldn't help us, we had to wait for the manager to be seated, even though we booked. After being seated we waited to get our menus, to which we had to place our beverage order twice, each time with a different waitron. We ordered one bottle of still water for the table then a bottle of the MCC Graham Beck Brutt. The bottle was not presented to us to check the temperature (luckily it was slightly chilled) then after pouring it got left on the table. We didn't receive an ice bucket nor wine cloth. After waiting another while for the waiter to appear back again to take our dinner order it was rather evident that he did not know what was sold out or how many portions were left of certain dishes. Now I must say, not trying to be pretentious, that when I found out that the fish that was stated on the menu was in fact not fish but rather prawns I was bitterly disappointed. Once our orders were finally placed the table was set for our meal with grease streaked cutlery. Overall the food was okay. The Karoo lamb portion was rather big, and some pieces of the lamb a bit chewy because they were dried out. The boeuf bourguignon was tasty and appealing, however the rice was an over cooked, sticky globule on the place. The chicken curry was, chicken curry, luckily couscous was requested, although it was bland. The sambals accompanying the curry were nice, not what you expected when eating out and the roti was very chewy and overall not nice. One thing to say is that, at least the vegetables were not over cooked. As an experience as a whole, I definitely was not satisfied with much. The service was lacking and the general attitude of the staff was appalling, after being knocked by them while they are walking around, being pushed past when about to walk down the stairs to the cloak room. The food was not what I was expecting, mostly bland and over cooked. The vibe of the restaurant was not too bad considering all the aspects.