"First of all, my one positive thing to say about this restaurant is that the two waitresses were beyond lovely and very accommodating so this review does not fault their service. However, we came to the Dovedale hotel to celebrate my parents silver wedding anniversary as we have been before and the food has been to die for and the atmosphere has been great. Since we’ve been in the past, the restaurant has closed and reopened again, with none of its former chefs. This has meant the food went from being impeccable to being essentially frozen tasteless mush. The starters we ordered were boring, tasteless and obviously came from a cheap supermarket and were shoved onto a plate. The mackerel pate was just mackerel and mayonnaise in a pot and the “cheesy garlic bread” was 3 slices of frozen garlic bread with a slice of cheese on top, and this cost £5. Hoping our experience would improve, we ordered for our mains; scampi that was so dry and shrivelled up that it was pretty much just batter, overcooked peas (yes, even the peas weren’t cooked right), dry unseasoned chicken, overcooked salmon that resembled rubber, beef medallions that were not as described at all, they were 4 pieces of stewing steak in an ominous sauce, fish and chips that were obviously just frozen goujons, which was the biggest disappointment of the night because the location of the restaurant is home to some of the best fish in the UK. After this disaster of a meal we ended up sending 5/9 meals back and asked for the chef/manager, who was extremely rude and unhelpful, and when we listed our problems, he simply shrugged and said the “beef medallions” that were hard as rocks were actually beef fillet tails and offered no apology or solution to our other issues, and it was actually the waiting staff that were extremely apologetic and embarrassed and gave us some money back. We then waited for our desserts to see if this could redeem a diabolical meal, and were met with a tiny slice of frozen cheesecake that you may buy in Morrisons for about £2, and cake that was dry and cheap. Aside from the dismal food, the atmosphere was dead, nobody was in the restaurant as they probably got the memo, but unfortunately for us we didn’t. The decorations made the place look like an old junk shop with everything from Asian lanterns, African giraffe woodwork and sail boats cluttered around, with price tags hanging off everything, no doubt trying to squeeze a profit out of anything they could. Utterly disgusting and I suggest the management double the waitresses pay for what they have to deal with, will never be coming back and you’ve lost a loyal customer."
