The Railway Tavern — Restaurant in County Donegal

The food in this place is fab (although they have yet to catch up to an acceptable level for those of us who are vegan) but the service we had was very poor. I loathe to write this review, as this is an establishment I simply want to love. We visited for my birthday, six adults and a baby. The female waiter who served us left all the cutlery in a bundle in front of one of our party and told her "sure you deal with them". When we were finished eating our first course, she returned and asked for our plates to be passed back to her and in one instance, be placed on her arm! When we were finished eating and were having our coffees, after one hour and thirty five minutes at table, she came and asked us to leave as "the group sitting behind you is bigger and needs this table." At the time, we were the only two groups in the entire restaurant. When my brother politely told her that we would finish our coffees and then leave, she stood at the door and stared (glared) at us quite angrily, until we did. We hadn't even spent two hours sitting at our table. We were treated extremely inhospitably for such a large group who had multiple courses, wine and coffees - spending quite a lot of money. The reason I finally wrote this review is that unfortunately, as we are locals and have frequented this place over the years, this is not an isolated customer experience - which of course is extremely unfair on any customer, but perhaps especially so on loyal clientel. This is such a shame as it destroys what otherwise could be wonderful, in such a lovely setting and with such...

I'm not usually one for complaining but I feel compelled to write something today after the food and service I received on Sunday the 10th of November.

Ordered 2 steaks for me and my partner and was explicit on how we liked our steaks cooked (very well done with no pink inside), also ordered a cocktail when I ordered the food. Steaks arrived mooing and still eating grass, asked the waiter if they could take it back and at least kill the thing and cook it a little. The steaks were sent back to the chef and because it's open planned I could see the chef wasn't pleased with it being returned. The steaks were then presented for a 2nd time and this time they came back what I'd call rare. The chef watched as we cut into our bloody meat (it was like a scene from a Wes craven horror movie). He could tell we were not pleased and left his kitchen area to ask if there was a problem, I made it clear that I specifically asked for a well done steak so he snatched the plates off us. He returned the plates with 2 burnt to cinders steaks. Neither of us could eat a bite.

When paying the bill I was handed my drink (the one I ordered when I was ordering my food), when I tried to explain to the manager that I didn't have the best of experiences he said thanks for the feedback...

I've been here before and never had an issue, I hope this is a one off but based on the attitude of the chef and manager I fear this place has went...

It has a lovely atmosphere and charm to it. The staff were friendly but service was slow. A combination of shortage of staff and bad management. It took 10minutes to be acknowledged when we arrived and a further 10 to be seated after that even though we had a reservation. It was difficult to order a drink at the bar whilst we waited (wasn’t that busy). Moving on to food. Our starters were delicious. We tried the soup and Goats cheese Salad. The Goats cheese salad was delicious with generous portions of cheese. Moving on the main we ordered the Fillet and the medallion both to be medium. The medallion was cooked perfectly and a good cut of steak. Top marks for this and well worth the wait. The fillet was lightly seared and was rare or what I would call Blu. I asked the waitress if she could ask the chef to throw it on the grill for another 30 seconds. She apologized and returned with another steak shortly after. This was also cooked very rare and the cut of meat was poor and fatty. Very disappointing. Moving on to dessert we had the apple crumble and fudge sundae both were delicious. However afterwards we waited some time to request the bill. We eventually decided to head out to the bar to pay where we had to wait a further 10mins to pay. Has...