Customer service is dead. Long live capitalism.

This is the most boring and underwhelming place I've been in a long time.

TLDR: Fast forward to two days later when we bought four meal deals at Tesco. Honestly, those meal deals wiped the floor with this place so far as flavour is concerned for a third of the price, literally.

Why invest in talent when you can open a gift shop and stock wholesale items available in many a gift shop around the country to make money from passers by who won't be back anyway? With respect, I don't know what this place is or was or what is or was trying to be so forgive me if the nostalgia and landmark of it missed me.

This is a somewhat pointless complaint as we'll not ever be back even if we got promise of better and a voucher. I've just thrown £40 out the window. Three hours of work. Gone. Wasted.

What a beautiful barn - I'm a sucker for lots of wood - but if you're going to slice inch-thick cross sections of tree then please do a better job of hiding the nails you secure them to the wall with.

No music was a peculiar choice. Spelling mistakes on the menu are an easy sign of a restaurant that doesn't care about details.

You pay first, so at least they don't expect a tip, but you pay first, so whatever happens, they've got your money.

So, so disappointing. Nestled in a very quaint village somewhere on the way to The Lakes I would imagine there are loads of local farms selling delicious meat and veg. This place, I believe, has avoided shopping at any of them. The pork was totally void of any flavour besides my portion of the 5l wholesaler BBQ sauce in a pot.

What an ideal location to create a seasonal-vegetable medley or an excellent autumnal broth. Instead of just watery, unblended and lacking any cohesion bowl of stock and chopped nothing. It's hard enough being a vegetarian, let alone when these are your options. The salad, or however it was described, was big, chunky, soggy, undercooked sweet potato (after all, it's mandatory to have a sweet potato on a vegetarian meal) with the biggest pile of sauerkraut you've ever seen. Crunchy radishes, kale, watermelon (why??), rice and over-salted chickpeas. Again, there was no cohesion, no compliment across flavours or texture; this seemingly not-ending pile of what was left in the fridge had no flavour. Just a couple of different colours. It tasted even worse the next day, but at least the box gave out and leaked over the fridge.

Distracted by talking to regulars about ducks for a significant length of time (long enough to go back to reception to Google a particular answer) - the person I presume was the manager - chose not to ask how our meals were but did continue to loudly enough demonstrate how the ducks walk. Thankfully they did this very close to our table. None of the staff asked about our meals, either, but that's probably more to do with them following the example they're set. None of the staff even made eye contact with us, but when we did ask for a box for the salad (disgusting as it was, I struggle to create food waste), I was met with a look of such disdain. It was shocking.

A note on the box. A box for wet salad. Why would you give a pizza box with holes in it to someone wanting to take away a wet salad?

The best bit was after getting ignored at the till after the meal. No courtesy chat, inquisitive or polite "How was your meal?". That feels even more insulting than the toilet doors not automatically closing, so you can easily watch the chef use the urinal at the end of your meal.

As the owner of a failing business, I do wish I cared less and made significantly more money.