Went to the London Designer Outlet that opened a while ago at Wembley, it's not far from where I live and husband suggested it so I wasn't going to turn down the offer!
Parking is confusing. The signs say £30 but the attendant told us up to 2 hours £3.
The one main lift was out of action that day, but that is unrelated to our meal at Jimmy's. As my husband was using a shopmobility scooter, the waitress offered us a table for two right near the food counters. We'd just sat down and another waitress asked us had we just sat down, to which we replied we had. "Well can you come and sit over here?" indicating seating further away - to which we explained we'd been offered to sit there by her colleague. OK, maybe a genuine mistake. They weren't particularly busy as it was only 10 minutes after they'd opened at Noon.
So a waiter pounces to ask if we want drinks (which are nice but expensive) so I requested tap water. I let my husband go and get some food and waited for him to return and then went to peruse the food counters. It's an incredible place - an "all you can eat" single price where you can choose from salads, pastas, pizzas, chinese, indian, mexican, steak. If you're a big eater - this is the place for you! Thankfully, they had a nice selection of vegetarian dishes as we don't eat meat when we're out. When I returned to the table, my husband told me that a waitress had asked if he wanted a drink (glasses of water had not been brought to the table!) so he said he'd like an Assam Tea. It was obvious she spoke poor English because, in spite of him pointing to the words "Assam Tea" in the menu she said "You want Apple Mojito?" so he told her not to bother. A little later, whilst eating, I asked the waiter if we could have an Assam Tea. He went away, came back and said that they didn't have any and did we want another type of tea? "Okay, Darjeeling please." He returned to say they didn't have that, either so requested one pot of breakfast tea which, thankfully, they DID have. I did , finally, get my glass of tap water, a good 20 minutes and asking twice after my original request for it.
Sometimes the food isn't all that hot but, bearing in mind that once you've spooned food on your plate you'll be walking around the other food stations to peruse what else there is, the food on your plate is going to have cooled off (unless you've just picked up salads, of course!).
While eating our dessert a chap, who appeared to be the manager, had seen my water glass empty and came over to refill it and asked if everything was alright. Er, no, actually. So we explained about the seating and the waitress misunderstanding the request for tea and he apologised that they have a lot of foreign employees who don't speak the language very well. When we told him about the Assam tea he was quite taken aback that we'd been told that there wasn't any, nor any Darjeeling to be had and he said he'd look into it because both teas are quite popular.
Our visit was on a Saturday and there were a lot of people there who were presumably attending weddings later as they were all dressed up - one lady kept catching her long skirt on her heels! Also there were children running with a plate of food in their hands which I thought was extremely dangerous but nobody else seemed to think it was a problem. One guy in a chef's outfit but presumably a senior one, kept coming around with a dustpan and brush to pick up spilt food from the floors and the interior, which was VAST, was extremely clean. read more