Dear Camilla, I had such a giggle! about your Joke of a Platter review, even if 2 yrs on. Went to check it out today, opulent I dare say. Like you we check places to-eat-out first before. Often find the swankiest, the worst. Luckily we haven't had any bad experiences. It is a really unique hotel. But I agree, come on hospitality industry, we can't ride on the Mountain views alone. I'll score optimistically hoping to enjoy visiting again.

My daughter and I visited the Willaston Bar last week Sunday, and left in utter disappointment. We ordered a bottle of French champagne, and half way through the bottle we felt a little nibbly, as we had already eaten a meal at home. Our first choice was to order the Tempura Platter, so I queried the amount of the batter and the waiter had alluded that it is quite thick. There was nothing else on the menu that tickled our fancy so we then decided to order the Green Wrap with a side portion of fries; My daughter would have eaten the Wrap and I would’ve eaten the fries, as I am lactose intolerant. However, our waiter recommended that instead of the wrap, we should order a bowl of fries to share. Little did we know, we were being charged R90 for a small bowl of fries! I am sorry, but how does one justify that? Especially when their Green Wrap with fries costs R80. Ninety Bucks for fat, sloppy chips! Whereas, The One&Only Hotel and The 12 Apostles Hotel charge R45 for their ‘shoe string fries’ AND you get a choice of mayonnaise and ketchup. Their online menu - last updated in February 2018 - states that their fries cost R55, and their previous menu states that fries costed R45. The following day, I spoke to the bar manager and I was promised to receive a call from the Silo Hotel’s senior management. It is a week later and still haven’t received an email nor a phone call. This was our third and final disappointment at the Silo. Unfortunately we will not be returning to The Silo Hotel.

We went to the Willaston Bar at the Silo yesterday for a cocktail and a lunch snack as we wanted to test it out before bringing clients there next week...lucky for us we did and hence saved ourselves a huge embarrassment next week!we kept it simple (thinking it would be quick and nice) with a plain Charcuterie platter and waited almost 45min for it to arrive in a resturant that was just around 1/2 full. The two older ladies next to us had to actually get up and walk to the kitchen twice before their food arrived-and when it did the one lady got a sandwich with actually Frozen meat.....not cold-but Frozen....so at this point we were kind of happy we had ordered a platter that required no cooking what so ever! When our platter finally made its appearance it was almost comical! It was so badly presented with a few cooked ham pieces-(yes-regular PnP cooked ham) piled on top of eachother like Off-Cuts (not one actual full slice) and a pile of what could have once been Black Forest ham (yuk) but resembled Black Forest Biltong.....there was 3 very small pieces of cheese presented on the platter-two supposedly soft French style cheeses-but both unforgivingly plasticy and unripe and one Boerkas kind of cheese which had been left out in room temperature possibly overnight and was totally mooshy. In addition there was a small bowl of what could easily have been All Golds regular marmalade and a handful of black olives of the really mooshy no flavour Kak kind....to top it off there were four pieces of thinly sliced toasted baguette-needless to say all four slices was soggy. It was all a sad sight. In Cape Town we are so spoiled for choice and have access to world class produce these days. This was so under par and such a joke of a platter there was nothing to do other than leave it and just pay the bill and move on-we paid in full-and then found the food and beverage manager and gave him a detailed run down so hopefully we can save others from future embarrassment as well as this was truly one of the worst resturant experiences I have had in Cape Town in recent history. Needless to say we will not be bringing clients-or ourselves for that matter-any time soon.