Parker's Tavern — Restaurant in Cambridge

The food was either great or so so. My husband loved the venison meatballs but my sirloin was thin and dry and not worth the $. We had the Fondue to share as a starter and it was very small - easily could have been a starter for one person! It also needed some apples and carrots to dip in the cheese. I also would have preferred if the sourdough bread wasn’t cut so thin and toasted - give big chunks of bread on slices. No forks were given, it was big slices of bread so you had to re-dip after each bite - not a big deal for my husband and I but would be a bit awkward to do with a friend or date. I would recommend the restaurant adjust the way it is served and go more traditional with chunks of bread and apple and baby carrots and provide fondue forks, and give more cheese if they want to keep it for sharing, otherwise make it for one person. Also important to note It isn’t a traditional fondue, it is made with cheddar and some cheese I had never heard of but it is delicious! The kid’s Mac and cheese was tasty but my daughter wouldn’t eat it because it had breadcrumbs on it and flakes of green stuff, which is my fault for not asking about that (the constant picky kid battle continues sigh). The other people in our group liked their food overall, no rave reviews but no complaints. The service was awesome. Our server Balil (I hope I am spelling that right) was so sweet. He went above and beyond!! Even brought the kids at the tables pillows when one fell asleep (it had been a long day). He was very accommodating and attentive. The restaurant is lucky to have him! The restaurant itself was a nice space, high ceilings, lots of art on the walls stain glass windows. Quiet as well. No blaring music or anything so you can have a conversation easily at a large table of 9 people. The bathrooms are huge and clean but the water that comes out of the tapes is scalding hot, even out of the cold tap - I tried 3 different sinks but was unable to get water at a temperature that wasn’t boiling hot. A quirky little thing- they were playing Toad and Frog audio books in the bathroom which was fun. All in all it was a nice meal. Very pricey but standard for the city where everywhere...

Underwhelming! We have followed the rebuilding of the hotel and the restaurant for some time and the building is outstanding.

Today was our chance to dine in Parker’s Taven, we had seen positive Times reviews and wanted to see for ourselves. We arrived slightly before lunch and checked in with the reception desk of the tavern and were duly booked in, a long and convoluted process involving at least a dozen screens on a tablet - what a waste of time! We were then taken to the restaurant, only for the person who booked us in to be told to take us back to the bar as they did not open to noon. Back to the bar, good service here glass of wine and a coffee whilst we waited.

Just after noon we were collected and taken to a table, first impressions of the restaurant was favourable, light and airy, some quirky art on the walls.

The “manager” who was less than warm when we had tried to sit down was a complete change, friendly helpful and good fun.

The menu has some “comfort” food and some interesting dishes in the end we shared a large Burrata with tomato salad, this was extremely good, creamy and tasty when accompanied by their brilliant soda bread.

Mains, I went for the pie of the day, steak and kidney with green vegetables. Well this was underwhelming, good kidney, but over cooked tough steak, and in general the greens were significantly over salted. My partner went for the gammon egg and chips. This to was a disappointment, with the gammon over cooked on one side the green salad had obviously been to the same school as the veg and was over salted. The chips were very good.

We felt we should try deserts so two rice pudding soufflé split decision as I felt that it did not taste enough of rice pudding.

The room is far too noisy as it fills up at one point I thought that there was background music, but could not be sure, I would hate to be here when the room is full as you would need to shout across the table!

The final disappointment was just how close the tables are to each other this was not too much of an issue when it is a quarter full but could be when the room is full?

Overall promised a lot and failed to deliver - I feel the Ivy would be a better...

Two stars are purely just because of the lovely food. Booked a table for 9 tonight, the food was lovely however service was incredibly slow. We had to chase each course/even someone to take our orders for food. It felt very unorganised and like we were left to it completely. We ended up being there for over 3 hours because of the delays in service.

When I arrived I ordered a round of drinks at the bar (there were several kids) only to be told that the didn’t have any lemonade or Diet Coke whatsoever, I had to remind/chase the waiter for this several times. I was given an old menu when seated so chose something that was no longer on offer, then 10 mains were brought out despite there only being 9 people. There was a 45 minutes-1hr delay in taking orders for pudding, I have been before so knew that they offered the ice cream sheet that you could tick your options, again this wasn’t given to us until I found someone to ask. Most of us only had 1-2 courses and only 2 were drinking so at almost £500 this was extremely disappointing, needless to say service was included in the bill!

As we had such a large party I couldn’t book on the website so it says to send an email with the info, we had planned this well in advance and in the end no one ever replied to my email so 2 weeks later I tried calling, the phone was ringing for almost 20 minutes before someone answered - this was at 10am so hardly a peak time.

Again the food was lovely, I have been previously as a table of 4 and service was slightly slow but nothing to moan about, wouldn’t bother going if you have more than 4/5 people, we felt like we were an inconvenience the whole night as other tables were getting a lot more attention, just felt like poor planning as it seemed no one had been assigned to look after the table. They apologised after each mishap and we could see that they were clearly understaffed/lacked a manager to help organise everyone however I feel the service has to match the prices that they are charging and at £25 for some mains I feel having to find a waiter after being left for 45minutes with a menu is...