Castle John's Newcastle — Restaurant in Clarington

TLDR at bottom. I don't like to write negative reviews without first speaking to the establishment, but they've left me no choice. My wife an I ordered in from here the night before last, excited to try as it's the only restaurant in town we had not yet eaten at. When we opened my sons chicken nuggets I was disappointed that they looked burnt, which was confirmed by the need to break off pieces to eat them - you couldn't take a bite without it just snapping off. Not worth complaining about, these things happen, we thought. We then opened our nachos and were hit with the overwhelming smell of cigarette smoke. The smell was strongest on the outside edges, like someone had come back from a smoke break and immediately packaged them, so we only ate the ones in the middle and discarded the rest. The nachos were okay so again, we didn't want to complain. My (vegetarian) wife was enjoying her vegetable wrap and fries, when she (a little disgusted) pulled a half-cooked chicken wing out of the middle of them. She decided that was enough to want to talk to the restaurant, after not being able to reach anyone by phone we sent an instagram message. Seen, no reply, still 2 days later. We thought maybe instagram was not monitored so sent a Facebook message. No reply. Finally, last night, my wife was eating the leftover wrap (the chicken wing ruined her appetite so she saved the wrap for the next day) when she suddenly spat it out into a napkin. Looking down into the inside of the wrap was a large piece of bacon. We called again and this time managed to get through. When we mentioned the chicken wing the response was "oh it probably just fell in" - no apology, just an excuse. We thought perhaps she didn't understand that my wife is vegetarian so could be (and was) very ill if she ate meat so pressed that a little, and the woman on the phone said it was a busy dinner rush right now so could she call us back in a couple hours to discuss. Here we are, a day later, still no call. Mistakes happen, I get it. Thankfully it wasn't a food allergy. What I can't forgive is the complete lack of response when issues were brought up.

TLDR: Blatant disregard of safe food handling, cross contamination, and accountability. Avoid this place if any of these things matter to you, and go to Walsh's Snug or Massey House in town - great people...

I chose Castle John’s over another restaurant in the area based on menu choices and reviews. The staff was friendly. The place needs a good clean from a door off the hinges in the ladies bathroom to a Christmas tree, boxes and pieces of broken furniture stored outside the door. When the waitress delivered the food she apologized by how it looked and said that they were “training a new cook”. She said that she had even tried to make it “look better”. Thanks for the sentiment but if I was the waitress it would not leave the kitchen. The club sandwich didn’t look like a club and the ingredients were sub par. My Ruben tasted very good but there was one or two pieces of pastrami at best. While I realize that this was pub food I would have expected a higher quality. The new cook needs to be trained on food presentation which is equally as important as the taste. The waitress should have sent it back to be remade. She knew and even apologized. I was a...

We have been big fans of this restaurant since moving to Newcastle 5 years ago and go somewhat frequently. Always good food. Prices haven't gone up much, but for the first time, we were disappointed in our meal.

Taste was still good, but the portions were definitely noticeably smaller. The shrimp fajitas no longer come with an adequate amount of shrimp; I got 4 large size shrimp. They used to be smaller shrimp but they gave you lots of them. Other person got chicken and not a lot of it.

You get smaller amount of peppers and onions.

The wraps were paper thin. Always absent from the fajita meal at this restaurant is rice. Most places give you rice with fajitas which isn't an expensive item, but you won't find that here.

So, won't be ordering fajitas here anymore. I hope other meals on the menu haven't been skinnied down...