"I have just returned from having afternoon tea, and was really looking forward to it. Sadly it was extremely disappointing. arrived at the restaurant, the staff were at the rear of the restaurant, and clearly saw us, but chose to ignore us, leaving us...standing for minutes, a simple recognition and I’ll be with you in a moment is just basic customer service. It all went downhill from there! We were early and asked to be seated, they couldn’t accommodate us in the restaurant, but could in the bar area, this wasn’t an issue, or so we thought! It then took a further minutes for anyone to give us a menu. We asked for tea, after minutes the tea arrived, we poured it and the milk was off, told the waitress, who said she would sort it out, instead of removing the cups and milk left it on the table.After another minutes, we had to put the tea and milk on the bar and ask the bar staff to replace the tea. Again after a wait it arrived. At this point we had been in the hotel for minutes. The food then arrived, finger sandwiches with extremely odd fillings. What should have been salmon, tasted like Shiphams paste. One with red onions and something that I couldn’t distinguish, the last was ham that was so thin and sparse you couldn’t taste it. We had a savoury scone and a fruit scone, no butter!!!! Asked the staff member at the bar, who said she would get some from the restaurant. She then continued to serve, clean and fold napkins for minutes. She then asked another passing staff member to get some butter. Yet another minutes wait. The sweet treats- pre made, hard pastry cases filled with a cream flavoured with mint and a “wild” strawberry a giant hard tasteless strawberry) a lemon meringue with basil flavour( not a snif or basil), a hard stale chocolate brownie, and a rhubarb trifle, this was a over sweet rhubarb, covered in tasteless custard and a crumble top??? Just all odd and nasty! Clearly no pastry chef in this hotel. I have to say I was expecting more from this afternoon tea, I have been to many in the local area and far flung! This one was one of the worst. The quality of the food was very poor and the customer service was appalling( some re-training on The basics, and the presence of a manger may be required)."
