Generally excellent, some toilet annoyances
4
4
Date of visit: December 2016
I am a disabled person. I have experience of challenges around: accessing toilets and moving around.
I use or have experience of: disabled toilet
Overall Rating
Good
Easy access into the restaurant, a bit cramped inside, and a very annoying situation with the accessible toilet. But nevertheless well worth a visit - lovely staff and fantastic food.
Disabled Access In and Around
Good
Entrance to the restaurant is step-free and it's possible for a wheelchair to move around the rather cramped layout with some mild inconvenience. Expect people passing behind you to kick and bash your wheelchair - this is annoying. Tables are a good height.
Parking & Transport
Average
The nearest tube station is Sloane Square, which is not step-free, but does have escalators from the westbound (but NOT the eastbound) platform to street level, so if you can get out of your wheelchair and take it up an escalator, this station may be an option. Loads of buses go along the King's Road. I wouldn't attempt to park nearby.
Accessible Toilets
Bad
There is an accessible toilet available, it belongs to the adjoining hotel. To reach it you must pass through many heavy doors, accompanied by a member of restaurant staff, who must bring a key to operate the lift, because the accessible toilet is in the grotty basement, where customers are not normally allowed to go. A few more twists and turns round some shabby and unattractive basement corridors, and you reach the toilet, which has not been laid out correctly. The red cord is MUCH too short - anyone who fell over in the precarious transfer from wheelchair to toilet and back would not be able to summon assistance - this could be really dangerous in the case of serious injury. There is no lowerable horizontal bar on the open side of the toilet and there is a bin in the wheelchair transfer area. See my photos below. Altogether this is a very poor excuse for an "accessible" toilet.
Staff
Excellent
The staff were uniformly cheerful, friendly, and keen to be helpful. Five stars to all the waiters/waitresses/waitrons. For the management, only three stars, because of the completely unsatisfactory toilet situation, which the managers should have spotted and rectified by now, or - if they regard it as the hotel's responsibility - they should have got the hotel to rectify it.
Additional Information
Despite the various gripes and annoyances, I recommend this branch of Côte.
