Inn The Park

Unfortunately my family and I chose to eat lunch here today and we were all disappointed. £37 for one sausage and mash, 2 very dry, chewy and plain sandwiches, 3 desserts and 2 drinks! The staff were unhelpful - kept referring to the menu on the board - board was blank! No signs up saying not to sit in certain areas and were repeatedly asked to move by the manager and staff even though we had nearly finished and they hadn't approached for the previous 20 minutes then stationed an employee behind us to hurry us along - not easy with 2 small kids!

Over priced for poor food and awful staff and managment. Never ever going again!
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Emma Twidale
1 Overall rating
Food 2 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 1 | Value for money 0
Saturday, September 04, 2010

Had breakfast here one Sunday Morning:

Uncomfortable chairs - the back of them only support the small of your back and you find people slouched over their tables.

Breakfast was over-priced and very bad quality: scrambled eggs watery - bacon old and hard - sausage and black pudding very ordinary - and quite small quantities considering the price.

Jam/marmalade is put on the table in rather large jars which has obviously gone around other tables.

Service was slow and too many babies around for some reason!!

There are several places within 2 minutes walk which serve much nicer breakfasts

All in all, never again.
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0 Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 0 | Value for money 0
Monday, August 02, 2010

The area around St James park is not blessed with many spots to feed a hungry family so my wife and i found ourselves venturing back to this place after a fairly unimpressive first visit for dinner a few years ago. It all looks so smart and with the great location surely the food and service must have picked up? Wrong. It's still an absolute shocker on most fronts; expensive with poor food and strangely uninterested staff.

The only moment of amusement for me was writing this review whilst waiting for the bill and being able to say, when the Manager enquired as to the quality of our meal- "pretty bad, please see this web site for more detail".
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John Ditchfield
2 Overall rating
Food 2 | Service 2 | Atmosphere 3 | Value for money 0
Friday, July 09, 2010

Over priced average food and mediocre service; a pity because the setting is pretty.

I ate rather dry chicken on a bed of over-cooked veg smothered in butter.
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John Ditchfield
2 Overall rating
Food 2 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 4 | Value for money 0
Friday, July 09, 2010

Nice location - had a work lunch there in the sun and I don't think the ambience itself could be beaten, despite being sat near the busy entrance. The food was good too - I had two starters, the goats curd and beetroot salad and then the crab and samphire, which was delicious. My fellow diner had the asparagus and baked cod. It was all very seasonal and light, in keeping with the al fresco table, but the menu probably tried a bit hard.

In common with the previous reviewer though, I found the service terrible. It took too long to get ANYTHING and whenever we tried asking somebody apart from our regular waitress we got scolded for going 'outside of our section'. A 2.5 hour lunch that really shouldn't have taken more than an hour and a half. My companion said it was the same last time he went. Oh dear.
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7 Overall rating
Food 7 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 9 | Value for money 7
Thursday, June 03, 2010

I went to Inn The Park on a Saturday morning for brunch. The location was great and, considering that, the prices seemed reasonable. However, the service was nothing short of terrible. Having sat in a rather sunny spot and as another couple had just left we decided quite quickly to move to a table slightly in the shade. We informed a member of staff and moved. After prompting, the staff cleared a few things away, it would take over 30 minutes and three or four requests in order to get it fully cleared. Simple things such as clearing the previous person’s glasses and wiping the surface that from my experience in Asia would all have been done before we had even moved tables in the first place. All this despite the fact there were not even that many customers and during this time the staff continued to set up empty tables all around us. The coffee took twenty minutes to arrive and was actually very good. The water which we asked for when we first ordered arrived after asking three times and was then brought to the table only to be suddenly taken away again and then once again brought back! So just to fill a jug with water and serve it took about 30 minutes! The omelette and French toast were served extremely late after about 45 minutes. I waited a further five minutes for toast and it then took three requests to get some marmalade. I was told by one waiter to ask another member of staff, and the only helpful person was someone on the self service breakfast area who I had to get up and go and find. We were served by three or four different members of staff, all of whom seemed to be being managed extremely badly. At one point the head waiter said to one member of staff "just shut-up and set up"; the obviously disheartened waiter murmured under his breath that the other should "just shut up." Obviously things were not going well and there were problems but not at any point did anyone apologise or seem to realise what bad service they were providing. The food was okay but all of it spoiled by the service and at £23 really not what you would expect. The next morning I took my Korean friend to a London greasy spoon near Greenwich. The tea was served instantly and with a smile, the breakfasts arrived shortly after and the tables were spotless. It cost about £8.00.
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electricrecollection
3 Overall rating
Food 5 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 4 | Value for money 2
Thursday, June 03, 2010

What a fabulous location in St James's Park with the restaurant overlooking the lake. Unfortunately despite specifically requesting a table on the terrace we were given a table inside with no view of the park or lake because of the outside serving station. The food was good and would have been even better if the main courses for the six of us arrived at the same time rather than two arriving about 15 minutes before the other four. The service was really terrible and unlike previous reviews in which comments were made about staff interrupting meals enquiring if everything was ok, I wondered if the staff would have noticed if we had just walked out of the restaurant as they took no notice of us at all. Recommend this restaurant is avoided.
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2 Overall rating
Food 3 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 4 | Value for money 2
Sunday, May 23, 2010

I think this restaurant hopes its attractive setting will offset its various weaknesses. On a sunny day a week or so ago I was there for a weekday birthday brunch. The first problem was that the restaurant was chilly and we had to keep our coats on. The food took a little too long to arrive and when it did it was fairly dismal. The plates were cold, both the scrambled and the poached eggs were cold, the latter were also vinegary and trailing unappealing threads, and the large ‘roasted tomatoes’ had been cooked whole so that when you pierced them they just leaked watery liquid over the rest of the dish. The waitress had asked about the required consistency of boiled eggs – the white set and the yolk runny – but they came liquid and still transparent. The manager was apologetic and offered complimentary coffees while things were sorted out but the staff even got those orders wrong – and they were cold too. The management really needs to get a grip on this place as it is a wasted opportunity to run something spectacular.
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BirthdayGirl
5 Overall rating
Food 3 | Service 7 | Atmosphere 4 | Value for money 4
Friday, October 30, 2009

A splendid location in St James's Park with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the lake ... but almost everything else disappointed.

I had a lukewarm soup followed by what was described on the menu as 'salt beef'. The stringy fatty thing that appeared on the plate was an overwhelming disappointment, and coupled with a duck egg and potato salad didn't even begin to justify its price tag of just over £16 (admittedly one of the cheaper main courses here).

The service was abrupt and slow. Our waiter somewhat curtly interrupted the group to take orders, check everything was alright, etc.

I'd recommend coming here for a coffee or beer on the outside balcony simply for the setting ... but would avoid eating here like the plague.
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AB - View all reviews by this user
3 Overall rating
Food 1 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 5 | Value for money 1
Thursday, September 24, 2009

Gristly salt beef (more like a wrongly cooked old steak), a cold duck egg and insipid potato salad. Service, in the a la carte section was swift, but so much so I felt like I was on an escalator pointing directly to the exit. For this privileged, we were seated next to a lady who had purchased takeaway, but had decided sitting down was preferable. She may have been a little aged, hence the staff's relaxation of the rules, but her incessant complaints (“soup too cold, not enough bread/butter/pepper”...) and frequent hailing to friends across the room, transformed a bad meal into a nightmarish experience.
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Dick Taylor
2 Overall rating
Food 2 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 1 | Value for money 1
Thursday, September 17, 2009