"We popped in for lunch whilst looking around the garden centre. We should have guessed the standards, as the place looked tacky, horrible dust collection plastic flowers etc. No hand sanitiser available anywhere even. No menu’s available, we had to ask someone who looked like...they worked there (no uniform or name badges, so lucky we guessed right) if they just served cakes, as it really looked like that was it. We were told sit at a table and a menu would be brought to us. Unfortunately, no drinks menus available. While we were choosing what to had an elderly lady came to our table with plates full of food, and insisted it was what we ordered . Two old ladies at the table across the room from us waved at her and told her it was actually their food. We chose our lunches, then had to queue for ages in front of the cake counter. I asked if they had wine, was told they did, then had to go over to a bar area to choose which wine (totally ridiculous they don’t have a drinks menu). Once I let the lady know, I had to return back to the cake counter to place our food order, unfortunately an old lady hadn’t been paying attention to me needing to go to tabard to order my drink, and was now stood at the counter in my place, she then had to back up, as did the other people patiently waiting behind her! Certainly no social distancing here. like a lunch club at an OAP’s home. I ordered a root veg curry, and asked for a coronation chicken sandwich, instead of toastie. The lady taking my order said it was no problem, she’d write do not toast, just sandwich requested on my order. Those, a portion of chips, coffee and wine were so definitely not cheap. Even after asking my table number to begin with, before I placed my order, she read back my order and quoted the wrong table number! Fortunately I was able to correct her. We had to pick up our own napkins, salt and pepper from dishes too, rather unhygienic. No cutlers or sauces available. We were sat at our table for minutes, then my friends coffee arrived. I asked where my wine was, the waiter said I had already had it! I assured him I hadn’t, then expected him to get it for me, he didn’t! I flagged down a waitress (my friend had half finished her coffee at this point) asking for my wine. She said she’d get it for me. About minutes just to get a drink after paying for it is ridiculous, having to ask for it three times is bonkers too. Our food arrived. As you can see from the photo, my sandwich was actually toasted! Ridiculous. There was some salad on my plate (not mentioned on the menu), with peppers and tomato on, revolting. It seemed like someone had put just drops of a balsamic dressing on it, incredibly tight. The coronation chicken was very thinly spread, far too many sultanas bulking it out and replacing chicken, no apricot in it whatsoever. The ‘crispy’ bacon mentioned on the menu was actually undercooked streaky fatty flabby bacon, certainly nowhere near being crisp. Really disappointing, I left half of it, at it was worth about The chips were really nice, but I had to ask the elderly lady delivering our food for ketchup. She brought a bowl of tartare sauce! I told her we asked for ketchup, for the chips, she seemed confused, said she thought we would want tartare for the curry! Fortunately she did come back with the ketchup. She brought cutlery and napkins with our food. They must waste a lot of money on unrequited sauces and lots of napkins for no reason. The root curry was horrible, tasted like it came from a tin and had been reheated in a microwave, yuck! All in all, untrained clueless staff, most of which look like they should have retired years ago. Awful food, very expensive for such poor quality. Definitely not a customer friendly place. It seemed to have quite a few elderly customers, perhaps they have OAP specials? Definitely not somewhere either of us will waste our time or money again. Garden centre was dreadful too, fake/plastic plants or decorations, lots nothing to do with gardening, handbags etc as well. There’s a couple of decent garden centres, which also serve food, around minutes away from this place, surprising anyone bothers wasting their time or money here."
