Tony Tobin at The Dining Room

I was extremely disappointed by my experience at tony tobin - the dining room in Reigate.

I had the duck main - which was very dry and overcooked. To go with it was a tomato based bean sauce. I have never seen duck and tomato together - mainly coz they dont work at all! i left most of the dish! I have had better duck at chez gerard.

the steak main was okay - a little bland but edible.

the deserts were appalling!! I am someone who looks at deserts before the mains and they sounded good but when they came out they were awful!!

i had "profiteroles" - the choux pastry tasted more like bread... the chocolate sauce tasted cheap and just like melted dark chocolate.... the filling was flavourless "vanilla" icecream.....Save your money and go to morrisons as they do better profiteroles than this!

my partner had the stick toffee pudding which was so sweet that it made my teeth hurt... my partner had to literally squeeze out the sauce to even eat one bite... again came with the same flavourless icecream.

this was the first time i went and i will never go again. Save your money - go to any restaurant nearby!!
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2 Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 3 | Value for money 0
Tuesday, September 20, 2011

At last I dont have to go to London to find a good Restaurant food and service is first class.
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S Jones
10 Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 9 | Value for money 10
Sunday, May 29, 2011

We recently moved to the area and have been looking for a local high quality restaurant; we wanted to try the Dining room despite mixed reviews. When we arrived, the decor made a good first impression and the atmosphere relaxed. We started to worry at first glance at the menu, we were surprised to see a set menu type selection and to be honest expected possibly one or two more options for both the starters and mains. At the time I thought this may not be a bad thing as a minimal menu would usually indicate that the food would be of a high quality due the chef being able to put more thought in to a smaller selection of dishes. We both opted for the duck terrine to start which was bland and verging on tasteless and heard similar for surrounding tables. For the main course my wife ordered sea bass which was dry with a skin which was burnt rather than crisp, i opted for the fillet steak (medium rare) this arrived medium and crispy and tasted like roast beef rather than fillet. The dessert was poor and was very shocked at the dollop of soft scoop on my pub style crumble. As for the service (at an included 12.5%) we were served by a variety of impersonal staff, never once offered more drinks and never asked how the meal or our evening was. Despite all the above, we made the most of the evening together and had a relaxed all be it below average meal for the price. I would suggest that this restaurant needs a new chef who cares about the food he serves and a maitre d' who pays attention to his customers and does not allow his staff to chew gum while serving!

Over all this was a disappointing experience.
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3 Overall rating
Food 3 | Service 1 | Atmosphere 5 | Value for money 1
Saturday, April 09, 2011

I went to the Dining Room with 4 friends to celebrate a 50th birthday. We were all looking forward to it but although the food was delicious and we have no complaints about that at all, the service was somewhat lacking. Three of us ordered Turbot, but there were only 2 left (it was only 9 o'clock!) So the birthday girl ordered something else. The starter arrived and was delicious (lobster tails). Over an hour after finishing we started to wonder where our mains were, the waitress went off to ask. The Maitre D came over to apologise - he had a large table in, and were plating up ours now. 5 minutes later food came out of the kitchen for a table that was seated after us. Either the Maitre D noticed our disappointed looks or realised something was still not right, but he was straight over to apologise again, offering us a bottle of wine. We chose the white we were drinking. The waitress brought it over and asked if we wanted to drink it there or take it home. We asked for it to be opened. We were glad we did, because it was 'corked'. They obviously replaced that, but it was just one more thing to add to the disappointment. We don't live locally so would unlikely be going back anyway.
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Lesley Billing
7 Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 6 | Value for money 7
Monday, October 11, 2010

My family and I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. The food, service and ambience was excellent.
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Tim Ewens - View all reviews by this user
9 Overall rating
Food 8 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 9 | Value for money 8
Monday, July 12, 2010