A group of 11 went for a birthday celebration. Several members of the party had visited previously and had good experiences, although one had been warned by her sister not to have high expectations.

The evening started well: our orders were taken promptly and it wasn't long before the starters arrived. Then it went downhill fast. Here are the negatives:
The sharing plate of nachos was crumbled as though it was the dregs of a packet; we complained and got a small plate as a freebie extra.
It took over an hour after the starters for the mains to be served. (It could have been worse; we reckoned the party on the adjoining table waited nearly two hours from arrival to mains.)
Empty glasses piled up on the table, although we did at least manage to get the starter plates cleared by handing them to the waiter while he was trying to do something else.
The waiter spilled some kind of creamy or cheesy sauce over a couple of people.
Drinks orders got forgotten or missed. (In the waiter's defence it was quite noisy so maybe he just didn't hear us.)
They ran out of Jack Daniels.
My fajitas didn't sizzle, the meat (plenty of it, I must admit) was erratically cut and cooked: some chunks medium-rare, some strips medium-well; and only four tortillas. The accompaniments were plentiful but unexciting.
Fajitas delivered to the adjoining table did sizzle - over my neighbour.
They brought out the same order twice.
When the bill eventually arrived it was itemised in a way that made it very difficult to check its accuracy or work out who should be paying how much as we split the bill.

There were positives. Some of the food was reported to be very tasty and they brought us a round of complimentary drinks to compensate for something, presumably the delays even though they'd initially said it was because we arrived late. (No more than 10 minutes, probably more like five, for the last few members of the party; some of us were early.)

Usually when we have a bad meal out it's apparent from events whether it's the kitchen or the front of house that's fallen short. In this case it was just so chaotic that we couldn't tell what was going wrong.

If this had been something other than a celebration more than one of us would have walked out and gone somewhere else. As it was, by skipping desserts and not leaving a tip (which would have been wholly undeserved) we had a few quid extra to spend somewhere that our custom would be appreciated.

I'm very unlikely to go back.