The Thomas Paine Hotel, Thetford. — Restaurant in Breckland District

Throughly disappointing on almost all fronts. I booked here for Mother's Day on my mother's recommendation due to the 3 previous visits here. The table was reserved for 1400, when we entered at 13:55 we were asked to sit at the bar area and told our table would be ready soon, 55 minutes later at almost 1500 we were finally seated. Starters arrived within a few minutes of being seated - nothing noteworthy to report, average Calamari at best. Starters cleared 45 minutes later, and the mains arrived at 16:00. The beef roast was good, the pork was awful, it was dry, chewy and the fat was not rendered in the slightest, when I mentioned this to the waitress (owners daughter) she took offence to the fact I was critiquing her mothers cooking, she pulled a face and didn't even acknowledge my concern before she walked off - great customer service! When I went to pay, she slid the receipt over to me, again no acknowledgement and apology for the poor food and even poorer attitude. The owner/manager did not want to come from the back and discuss the situation with myself and instructed her to remove 1 of the 2 pork meals from the bill. This could have all been avoided by simple common courtesy, something which is clearly not common here. My family and I will not return again, and I will advise all our friends not to return again. A wholly unacceptable and avoidable scenario that ruined a special day.

• update* great response from the owner there, do you think if I was 'blackmailing' you would not have come out to confront me... Of course you would have done, so don't lie to quash a bad review, accept that your restruant is not as good as you thought it was, there was no shouting, not even a slightly raised voice what so ever, as it was a busy restaurant I wanted to keep it low key, I didn't want to make a scene hence the reason I came to the bar. Get a grip of yourself and your arrogant daughter. You should have put your big boy pants on and came out to talk to us, even a simple apologies...

Went with a large group for a meal in mid February. The hotel is lovely and the open fire added a cosy atmosphere. Staff were friendly and polite. Unfortunately that's where the good bits ended.

The food was to say the least very disappointing. The prices are relatively high but would not have been unreasonable for good food. Four of us decided to push the boat out and have steaks. All of the orders were placed the week before hand so the hotel knew what would be ordered well in advance.

However... The starters were so-so. Nothing special but ok. It's when the mains came it started to go really wrong. We all had printouts of the e-mail message to the hotel with the menu choices so we all knew what we had ordered. However the hotel got one of the steaks wrong and had to be shown our printout to be encouraged to change it. I ended up having to wait ages for mine as I had the last one they got wrong.

Those who had lamb shank said it was pretty good. However the rest of the meals were pretty bad. Even the one burger that was ordered was cremated and left a bad taste. How can a burger in a roll go wrong? Most of the food was over cooked including the chips and onion rings. The chips were just greasy and tough. You could hardly get a fork through them.

Worst was the steaks. All were thin and pathetic, but worse they were all cooked to destruction. I ordered medium and my steak was not even well done, which would at least have been edible. My steak was cooked to a dried bit of leather. One of the worst steaks I've ever had.

Deserts were also a bit disappointing. I had luke warm apple pie with luke warm custard. All in all a very disappointing meal and I feel the chef let everyone down as the staff were very friendly. It's heart breaking when you see a place fail like this.

I don't like writing negative reviews, but this place needs some serious attention in...

THIS HOTEL SHOULD BE AVOIDED WHILE UNDER THE CURRENT OWNER. He does not do customer care at all. Definitely do not pay in advance because once he has your money you have no recourse for bad service, which does not seem to bother him.

Our experience was not pleasant from start to finish. The evening meal was horrible, the breakfast was way over cooked and the fan in the bedroom did not turn off until 1.30 in the morning, making it impossible to sleep. My complaint was not dealt with at the time and my follow up email, asking for a refund for the breakfasts and half the cost of the room, received the following very aggressive and inaccurate response:

Dear Mr Evans thank you for your comments, I have looked into this and am quite disappointed with your attitude towards my staff and the fact that you upset two of them with yours and your partners attitude and rudeness shouting at them and clicking your fingers at them. This is the first time i have had any issue with the fan and in three years never another issue. As for the eggs and toast yes it was burnt and eggs hard and this was rectified immediately.

To demand a refund of half the room and bedroom is out of the question and it is like guests of yourself that prepayment is taken to avoid situations that you provoke with asking for freebies. We as a company do not do blackmail and like to protect our staff from abuse from certain guests. As a gesture with regards to your toast I am prepared to reimburse you £5 let me know if this I sufficient.

Regards

Gez Chetal FMBII

Executive...