Wilfred's Restaurant — Restaurant in Burnley

The most horrendous and most expensive Christmas Day meal ever. Never again.

This restaurant needs much attention. It has no right to describe itself as a 'fine dining restaurant'. A more appropriate description would be 'an expensive restaurant with an unsupervised creche, where your children can play, shout and scream to their little hearts content'.

It certainly did not 'ooze style and sophistication' (their description) when we went there for our Christmas Day meal. Only one of the five of us had finished our main course when the noise level from children in the restaurant become intolerable and we couldn't hear each other speak. We asked the staff to box up our remaining Christmas Day meals. Before we were served dessert, we had to ask to be moved to another table, trying to get away from the excessive noise. The food in the main was standard, apart from the soup course which was delicious.

I accept it is a child friendly restaurant but I am amazed how parents and management think it is acceptable for children to behave in this manner, causing disruption to other diners and being a health & safety hazard to staff who are walking about with hot food and drinks. Surely there should be some etiquette rules on behaviour, so that other diners can eat their very expensive Christmas Dinner in the so called fine dining and sophisticated environment that Wilfred's purports to be.

Some of the staff are very good and very helpful. Others are surly and condescending, such as the lady and man on hotel reception who we heard talking about us at 7.10pm saying 'they don't look like they're getting ready to leave'. Simon the Manager will make himself scarce before he will deal with a situation.

We were notified prior to Christmas Day that last orders for drinks would be 7.30pm, therefore assuming guests would then have time to actually enjoy their drink. Just after 7pm the staff started to clean the floors and drag tables and chairs across the floor, I guess rearranging to prepare for breakfast guests the next day. Totally oblivious to the noise they made and again, not really helping to create a 'sophisticated environment'. We left at 7.30pm.

In summary, a Christmas Day meal for 5 people at £150 each, plus drinks at £132.80, total £882.80 of hard earned money - for the worst dining experience of my life. More fool me for paying that and expecting it to be special. It...

Soup (tomato and red pepper) and the cheese garlic bread were great. We decided to treat ourselves to the Chateaubriand. Meat was good (though my husband commented it was a little dry on the edges, I personally thought it was ok, good, and cooked medium rare perfectly), onion rings were quite greasy, red wine jus was just ok, peppercorn sauce was poor - had better sauce from a packet mix from the supermarket! The Bearnaise sauce we thought was just melted butter with herbs. For the sides we could choose 2. Dauphinoise potato was great, triple cooked fries were... disappointing. First set were undercooked and still hard so we requested replacements, the second set, Seems the chef over compensated and actually burnt about half of them! Photo. Not really happy, but at least they offered to discount the chips from our bill. Decided to risk a dessert and was met with some horrible crème brulé mash up of apple pie with it [photo]. Brulé (caramel on top) was burned and the combo with the fruit tasted horrible. The crème part was bland and tasted pretty bad - took on a little flavour from the fruit (which is a bad thing). There looked to be flecks of vanilla, but it certainly didn't taste like it. Apparently it was a new and experimental dessert (it's not on the main menu) - hopefully they rethink this combo and don't make it a regular thing. If they do, avoid it!

Overall, disappointed. Had a great start with the appetizers, but just downhill from there. Some little hiccups such as trying to give us dessert menus before we'd had our mains etc but overall those things are easily forgiven. Generally the waiting staff were helpful though could be a little more attentive to things like empty water glasses, wrong cutlery etc. Food issues - not so...

WILFRED’S Restaurant, Burnley Review

Visited on 25 July for wife’s birthday. Sadly not the best culinary experience. Having checked menu on line she was looking forward to the swordfish. However, when the dish arrived the content differed vastly from expectation. When queried, the waitress assured us it was correct. My wife accepted this as she didn’t want to spoil my meal – duck and chips – which I enjoyed. However, it was plain my wife was struggling with her meal. The noodles were smothered in a very powerful and basically inedible yaki soba sauce but the swordfish was totally lacking in any seasoning with an unpleasant watery texture. When the plates were collected we were obliged to say that the dish was not up to the standard and content expected, especially in consideration of the price being £21.95. It transpired the internet menu had not been updated to reflect the revised dish content. In light of this we were not charged for the swordfish. However, my wife’s birthday treat had been spoiled and we were not even offered a complimentary drink or dessert in recompense.

One further point; the couple sitting on the next table were smokers and although they went outside to smoke, when they returned the stench of tobacco did not enhance the dining experience given the close proximity of the two tables and the fact that there was no Covid protection screening in place. May I recommend smokers are given a separate section of the dining area.

However, the doorman...