Guest User
September 17, 2023
I’d followed this place for a while on social media and, based on the generally positive feedback, decided to give it a try for Sunday lunch. I’m sorry to say the whole experience was a great disappointment. The eating area is a cross between a restaurant and cafeteria, accentuated by a sign instructing orders to be placed at the counter. We were sat at our table for a while before we noticed this sign, but no one had explained the procedure to us and I wonder how long we would have been sitting there unattended if we hadn’t been lucky enough to spot the sign. The restaurant is very family-orientated, which is fine if you want somewhere where your kids can run around and play while people are trying to eat, but not great if you’re a couple looking for a peaceful Sunday lunch. Turning to the food, I ordered the signature pan roasted rump of lamb, which I requested to be cooked pink, a request which flummoxed the young and apparently inexperienced assistant working behind the counter. A colleague then interrupted and confirmed that, yes, the lamb would be pink. However, the same person subsequently advised that they could not guarantee pink lamb as “the oven has been on all day”, to which I replied along the lines of: ask the chef not to leave it in too long then! In fact the lamb was served pink (so why all the fuss?) and was actually one of the few acceptable elements of both of our meals. The lamb was served on a mound of over-cooked potatoes, olives and sun-dried tomatoes, which were all drowning in a greasy, over-seasoned watery fluid. I’d also asked for a side of seasonal vegetables, which it transpired comprised a piece of sweetcorn, red cabbage, carrots and - bizarrely - tinned mushy peas! All of the veg were grossly over-cooked and for the life of me I can’t understand on what basis tinned mushy peas can be classed as ‘seasonal vegetables’! My wife ordered the roast pork Sunday lunch. We were not given a menu for this option, just verbally informed that the Sunday lunch was a choice of beef, pork or chicken, so we’d no idea what it was served with. It turned out that stuffing and apple source - key ingredients of a roast pork lunch - we’re not included. It came with roast potatoes that were so over-cooked and soggy that they virtually disintegrated and the whole meal was not especially warm. We tried in vain to attract the attention of a staff member to address these concerns, but there were very few of them about and, what few there were seemed intent on not looking around the room to see if anyone wanted assistance, so we accepted defeat and munched on - we were hungry! At no point in the whole visit did anyone bother to ask if we’d enjoyed our food and if everything was alright, even when I went to the counter to pay. I ascertained that it was the owner who took my payment, so I voiced my concerns to him and advised that we wouldn’t be making a return visit. While he seemed mildly apologetic, he didn’t seem unduly concerned about the is