Kimos Cafe on Myrtle Sreet in Liverpool has a lot to learn in the way of serving food. As they seem incapable of listening to customers face-to-face I thought I would take the time to spell it out.

Food should be hot - not like the baked potatoes, which come half-cooked from the microwave with dry stone-cold fillings and a clump of mayo to help you choke it down.

Service should be friendly - not reminiscent of a bull-dog chewing a wasp, which is how they respond to customers who send inedible food back.

Chef’s should listen to complaints - not ignore feedback from customers. The two chefs would do well to taste the poor quality of their kitchen to remind them of how much they have to learn, should they care enough.

Me and my girlfriend were refused replacement meals or a refund, and therefore had to leave without eating our meals. I am amazed that anyone continues to put up with the awful fare and snarling service this cafe dishes up.

i really enjoy eating at kimos as it offers a wide variety of food and is always fairly cheap. It offers very middle eastern food but you can still get burgers and sandwiches. Sometimes the service is a bit dodgy and slow but this has only happened on two occasions. All in all its a good place for lunch or dinner but its not somewhere that i would return to on too many occasions as i think there is more to offer at other places.

This is something of a student institution in Liverpool, and I really wanted this to be a great review, but my feelings were very mixed after a recent dinner there.

Kimos is a large cafe-style eatery, which focuses on a combination of breakfasts, burgers and pizzas for the unadventurous and North African / Middle eastern food for the rest. This part of the menu features dishes such as cous-cous, tagines, tabouleh, dips, feta salads and so on. They also serve generous sandwiches to take away. If eating in, you order your food at the counter and give a table number; the food comes to your table, but you have to collect cutlery yourself. It caters well both for veggies and meat lovers.

The interior is spacious and decorated in an updated middle-eastern style, with mosaic top tables (though these didn’t feel fantastically clean - a facet of the rough surface).

We ordered a selection of dips - oddly styled as ‘tapas’, even though they were entirely Middle-eastern, some North African stews, and garlic/cheese bread. The starters were very good, with nice houmous and heavenly babaganoush (smoked aubergine and peanut dip). The mains were OK, and very generously portioned with rice or cous-cous and salad, but a little less tasty than we expected, especially after the starters.

The one problem was that the garlic bread my other half ordered did not appear despite asking for it three times - and then it arrived when we had finished eating. Not good - and the bread itself (a pitta, folded and stuffed with what seemed like garlic pesto) was horribly oily. The staff were very friendly, but in an odd way this made the experience more irritating - when someone smiles and says ‘I’ll look into it’, but then plainly doesn’t, you feel more cheated somehow. The good part was the price - it came to just over £10 a head - but that was just with tap water - they don’t serve alcohol.

So, I can see why it would be popular with students (at least, teetotal ones), but it definitely has more of a large cafe ambience than a proper restaurant. Interestingly, everyone around us had opted for the burgers and chips, rather than middle-eastern fare. And, although the price is excellent by London standards, you can eat well for around £10-15 elsewhere in Liverpool centre, (in Chinatown, for example) so it’s not quite the value it appears to be.