Mr Hamilton's Tea Room — Restaurant in Elmbridge

I don’t know where to start with what needs fixing here… We arrived at 12:15 on a Saturday lunchtime to find that there were only 5 sandwiches in the fridge and only ONE in the children’s food fridge, which we bought for our daughter as there didn’t appear to be any other suitable options. I somehow gathered up all our bits and pieces (drinks, crisps etc) in my hands because all the trays were stuck behind the serving counter, and paid one of the staff who was super nice and polite. So far, okay.

Getting back to our table, I opened my daughter’s sandwich and just as I was about to feed it to her noticed that it was a day out of date- so, back to the counter where a different young lady stared blankly at me before agreeing to swap it for something else. But what? There apparently weren’t any more sandwiches on site - luckily at that exact moment someone came out of the kitchen with two baked potatoes for someone else, alerting me to the fact that there was other hot food available to order than what was sitting in the hot cabinet (chips, pasties and the saddest looking burger patties I’ve ever seen.) There was no menu for this other hot food, and no prices anywhere, so I just had to accept that apparently the jacket was £4.50 more expensive than the sandwich and pay up.

So we swapped the expired sandwich for a jacket potato with beans and cheese (which, to be fair, our daughter absolutely devoured - hence the two stars) and then opened our boxes containing our toasted sandwiches, only to find they were both burned on the outside and a good deal crunchier than presumably intended. Deciding it wasn’t worth complaining, we all ate up, and on the way out I spotted the only information about the fresh hot food, a small blackboard hidden behind a post.

Such a shame - the garden itself is great but the food and some of the service at this café are really letting it down. I had never really considered just how good National Trust cafés are...

I'd highly recommend that they implement a new system for self service, such as having buzzers to take away when you order. The queuing of customers creates a pressurised environment for staff and is annoying because of long waits. The cream tea was pretty good. Another thing that must be fixed is the dishwasher - cutlery and mugs are not very clean. Overall, could be improved with some...

Painshill is really beautiful in a tranquil and totally serene setting. The tea rooms are nice, but sadly the coffee was nothing special (which was a shame, given that most places these days can at least offer good quality coffee.) Having said that, they were having problems as they had no working dishwasher that day, so all hot drinks had to be served in paper cups. That didn't...