The River Bar Steakhouse & Grill

We had a group of 6 of us fot a 30th Birthday. Contacted in advance that our daughters 30th was to be celebretaed in style with expensive steaks and cocktails. We told them she was a CELIAC. They said they could cater.

We ordered steaks and asked if given we had landed at 6.15 pm,itwas virtually empty if they could do a GLUTEN FREE portion of Chips or Saute potatoes.
Now bearing in mind your paying £55 for a surf and turf £34 for a bottle of wine not an unreasonable request.
Given my daughter has lived with CELIAC for 10 years, nearly all restaurants cover these requests with ease in a seperate fryer.
The waitress asked the CHEF..NO was the reply...I gave it 5 minutes then went to the manager and actually suggessted to him...he boils a few potatoes an sautes some in a seperate pan. ( 5 minute job, why was I suggesting them how to deal with this minor matter)
Reply from the Manger. NO...then in the most patronising why the Manager said..'WE DO HAVE THE FACILITY TO DO A GLUTEN FREE SALAD WITH THE STEAK'.

Im not being fussy and do judge for yourself, but this felt like a perfectly reasonable, proportional request from a group party that was budgetting £100 a night for the evening .
All other restaurants can facilitae this request, they fundamentally werent willing, how very verypoor and shocking for such a high end expensive restaurant.
So we left, no effort was made to address this issue. The management and staff were not interested the CHEF just refused the request. X 2.
Absolutely astounding.
It ruined the event totally.
Never been more dissapointed or had such shocking customer service, even Mc Donalds can do GLUTEN FREE FRIES !!

In 12 years of Trip ADVISOR I have only ever left one Negative restaurant review,

I was disappointed to find The River Bar Steakhouse & Grill, which is actually independent, felt rather chain-y in already chain-ridden Cambridge. At first glance it looks good, in a generic steakhouse sort of way and it is in a lovely spot although our waiter rather over-hyped the table: the wonderful river view could only be viewed by a ballerina-worthy neck-twisting turn and as it was dark the unlit river was too murky to discern anyway. The menu is cookie-cutter steakhouse and borrows heavily from Browns in both content and layout. You can't really criticise it for that though (except for a lack of imagination perhaps): if you go to a steakhouse, you should expect steak, right? I started with pan fried squid with chilli and lemon. Well, that was what was described; that is not what came. What came was some squid absolutely swathed in a sticky caramelised onion sauce. WTF?! Not often I say that. Yes, it was spicy and a cooked half lemon bobbed on the edge, but why on earth would you serve a sauce which a) utterly ruins the dish and b) is utterly not as you've described? I gently pointed that out when the plates were cleared and the waiter admitted they'd had some problems with that dish. So do something about it! We shared a Chateaubriand main at £50 which was a touch overcooked despite asking for it medium (don't patronisingly put cooking temperatures/explanations on the menu if you can't deliver on it!), was slightly on the small side for the price and came with just 2 small pots of undercooked chips and a smidge of each sauce. Poor value for money. A brownie pudding was overwhelmed by a too-rich chocolate sauce which needed something to cut through the sickliness. Wine was fine, if unadventurous, but I was impressed that when I asked for a dessert wine (none on the menu) they came up with 2 bottles. Drinks are definitely its forte: I've been to the lovely roof terrace before for great cocktails. All in all, it's not terrible but it's all a bit style over substance; maybe that doesn't bother the good people of Cambridge who are just relieved to have been rescued from the plethora of pizza places. Get a taxi and go to Alimentum for the same price and better food, people!