Westwood Cross - Vue Cinema & Ask Restaurant

My first review is going to be about a girls day out a couple of weeks ago. Being attached ladies (ahem), all 35+, we don't get a day together very often. We were dying to see the new Sex and the City film, none of us had kids or partners hanging about, so we arranged to go to Vue about 3pm & were considering which restaurant to go to afterwards.

We arrived at the cinema about 20 minutes too early, so went and got a drink. My first gripe is that both Vue's Frozen Fanta flavours are never working at the same time! I got a medium diet coke for a largely inflated price & was actually served with a smile! My friend D was talked into supersizing her drink for an extra 30p. She had the biggest soft drink i think i've ever seen & had to hold it with both hands!
5 minutes later, tickets collected by machine, we attempted to go into the cinema. Having handed our tickets to one of the girls who eventually stopped talking, we were told 'not ready yet, i'll shout you when its time'. Lovely. Polite!. On our way to the seating we noticed that Vue does, in fact, have 3 very large fridges full of alcohol!! We were very excited about this, Vue has seriously gone up in my estimation! We grabbed 3 mini bottles of very nice wine (with plastic glasses attached, over 12 quid for 3!) and the girl in charge of letting us in shouted over to us. She took our tickets & waved over her shoulder for us to follow everyone else.
As we walked in the ads were already on, so we settled down for the film. Not as quick as we would have liked unfortunately. Sex and the City started a full 35 minutes after we put bums on seats! Not amused, don't Vue make enough money out of the high priced tickets & snacks?? I won't bang on about the film, we did have one exciting moment where the whole screen went black & we could only listen to it. Someone had to pop out and tell the staff what the problem was, we took this as an opportunity to pop out for a fag & grab some more wine.
Vue ruined that film for me i think. We were sitting in those seats for a grand total of 2 hours and 53 minutes! I had to acclimatise when i came out, eyes blinking in the light!


We all had very rumbly tummies when we came out! There was some argument about which restaurant we would go to. I wanted my favourite Nando's (i was told thats too chickeny!), D wanted Frankie & Benny's (we weren't in the mood for the music) but S suggested Ask. Neither me nor D had ever been, so we agreed.
This is my new favourite place! As we walked over we could see lots of empty seats outside, although it was quite busy inside. We chose a table outside so we could smoke. We asked for an ashtray & then were told we couldn't have one, but to sort of hide the fact we were smoking from the manager!! Three more sets of people asked for tables outside & she whispered the same thing!  Bless.
Ask's furniture was nice, no wobbles & we got bought our menu's as soon as we sat down, 5 mins later she came for our drinks order, 5 mins after that she came for our food order. Service was really good at all times. I ordered Bruschetta for starter & Calzone Pizza (looked like a very large pasty!) for main, washed down with 2 bottles of Rose wine between the 3 of us. We stayed about 2 hours, a couple of friends came over (they had eaten in Chiquito & had a terrible meal) & the waitress was again there very quickly. I'm pleased to say i was quite surprised how much i liked ASK. £75 for the 3 of us (+ a couple of drinks for the visitors), service was brilliant & the food was fantastic.


We did actually go on to G Casino afterwards, but due to the amount of wine we had drank by then, i don't feel i can write an accurate review ha!! I do remember the barman making me a Mojito that tasted like flat lemonade though!

My very first review points are.................


Vue
Value - 3/10- Tickets & drinks are far too high. I don't want to pay that much money to see all those adverts (i have SKY for that!). They really should have noticed that blank screen too.
Service - 5/10 - Girls serving the drinks were nice & polite, but the 2 chatting whilst taking tickets were very rude and offhand. Staff move slowly at Vue. I've actually upped them one point as they suggested i bring ID if we are having alcohol next time!! hahahaaaa
Enjoyment - 7/10 - only because we had drunk so much wine & the film was quite good really. Being in there for nearly 3 hours was quite ridiculous though.
Recommended? - God no. But the kids would kill me if i stopped Sat/Sun morning kids club cinema (which is good at 95p a ticket!). What can you do eh??


ASK

Value - 8/10 - Can't argue with £25 each for a meal that good (this also included the £7 tip).
Service - 10/10 - Brilliant waitress, always available & couldn't do enough for us
Enjoyment - 9/10 - Was great fun, everything was great (apart from the cold wind that flew around our tablecloth at times.
Recommended? - Most definitely. Would recommend as the best restaurant at Westwood at the moment, i'm certainly going back.