The Five Alls, Cheltenham — Restaurant in Cheltenham

At the Five Alls in Cheltenham, the Sunday lunch is equal parts a meal and a worthy ritual.

We walked in, our stomachs grumbling from a busy morning, ready for a feast.

The menu hits all the right notes: Roast Pork with Apple Sauce, Roast Chicken with Bread Sauce, Slow Braised Beef with Horseradish, and a Lentil and Nut Roast that respects the needs of the vegetarians, vegans, and gluten-free folks - but we didn’t have any with us this time.

You pick your meat and then the menu lists all the sides you’d want for you to pick and order separately. We were a group of inquisitive and ravenous souls, so we grabbed one of everything and threw in a Yorkshire Pudding each for good measure.

The Roast Pork said with crackling, but it hadn’t crackled, a minor crime given the promise on the menu, but when the flavours on the whole are this good, you don’t hold a grudge for long.

I started with a cold beer, a nod to tradition, but then we moved on to a bottle of Orange Wine that paired like a dream with our mains.

The vibe was laid-back, but the food was seriously delicious. This place was recommended as a recently discovered high point, and now I’m passing on that recommendation to you.

The Five Alls is a nice pub in a central location, and a place I’ll be craving like Pavlov’s dog every Sunday. I’ll be back, and next time, I better getting...

The surroundings are lovely. The staff are attentive. The wine is awful. OK - we ordered a bottle if house red - expecting a specially selected cheeky number for £24.50 that was palatable. When the bottle turned up with the description “Vino Rosso” i knew we were in the mire!

It was DISGUSTING!!

Come on please - back yourself by selecting a decent house wine not the cheapest you can find! 🤦‍♂️

The food - slightly better but not an awful lot to write home about. I did enjoy the Caesar salad and salt and pepper squid (my other half didn’t though much preferring waga mamas at nearly the same price) I didn’t enjoy the pork balls - tasted slightly odd. We had several other dishes with our daughter ( her birthday ) that frankly were just not value for money. A shame really as we were very much looking forward to a special nite out.

That said, the staff were professional and courteous. We left a tip to our waitress due to the embarrassment she was suffering from “feedback” about the quality of wine and food. Not her fault.

Will not be going again...

The reviews and menus held such promise.

The pork belly and beef were flavourful and well cooked. However, we concluded at the end that there wasn’t a single side from the meal we weren’t disappointed with!

Burnt roast potatoes, dried out cauliflower cheese, dry “creamy” leeks, incorrect dish served resulting in a vegetarian getting lardons, horseradish instead of apple sauce. Pigs in blankets with no blankets. The list goes on.

As mentioned, the food was small, burnt and we were repeatedly fobbed off with things like they had “combined multiple sides into 1 bowl” which I perhaps could have believed had it not been for being sat right next to the kitchen where it was possible to hear the staff swearing about the lack of food and how they had already run out and still had another table to serve.

Perhaps if you ensure you dine at 2pm rather than 6pm you may have had a stocked kitchen and not just the food left to overcook for...