A restaurant set up by Manchester United legends Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville has closed after six years following customers moaning it was just like McDonald’s.
Cafe Football in Stratford, East London, has been slammed as too expensive, with one punter writing online ‘re-mortgage your property before eating here’ and another saying simply: ‘Never again’
Cafe Football in Stratford, East London, closed after it opened half a mile from West Ham United’s stadium
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The restaurant was situated at the heart of the regenerated part of Stratford, East London, where customers complained that it was too expensive in scathing TripAdvisor reviews
The restaurant is located in an area that was the hub of the capital’s Olympic reconstruction, less than half a mile from West Ham United’s stadium.
Its proprietors said that the shutdown will enable them to concentrate on the brand’s hotel chain, but they added that they ‘will not be making any changes to what we offer’ in terms of hospitality.
Gary Neville is pictured in a promo shot for the restaurant, which offered football-themed food including this ‘half-time orange’
One fan tweeted a picture of the menu in outrage at charging £14 for traditional pie and mash
Cakes incorporated elements of a football pitch and were topped with a garish green and white as pictured above
Drinks at the themed eatery included ‘Red Devil’ cocktails and among the snacks were ‘throw-in’ chips. But scathing reviews on TripAdvisor tarred the chain as ‘just plain bad’.
Sue R wrote on the review site that it was ‘very loud, with more children than adults, food portions small, just fast food’ adding it was ‘just like McDonald’s’.
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Wills 1653 posted: ‘Re-mortgage your property before eating here. Drinking in a public library would have been more exciting.’
And Deanne W wrote: ‘We went for afternoon snack just a bit of cake, it was just plain bad. Just don’t go and they don’t really care if you like what you get as long as you pay.
‘Everything is lovely to look at and clean and doesn’t have the taste to match. Hit and miss.’
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A rare time, the restaurant of two Man Utd legends was filled with customers
Fan Franchesca A P had a great time when she visited, because there were so few customers. She wrote: ‘Great night. Happy hour was great, we had a whole area to ourselves.’
Just last week, GG Hospitality, the firm behind the cafe, offered a promotion on Twitter letting children eat for free.
The company still has two restaurants in Manchester and another Football Cafe in Singapore.
Winston Zahra, CEO of GG Hospitality, said the firm will look to offer the cafe service at their hotels and at the Manchester cafes.
‘We can confirm that Cafe Football in Westfield Stratford has closed in line with our strategy of not operating stand-alone cafes and focusing on the growth of our hotel business,’ he said.
‘Cafe Football in future will form an integral part of the Hotel Football food and beverage offering.
‘We will not be making any changes to what we offer and the experience will remain purely Hotel Football.’