31 Castlegate Restaurant — Restaurant in England

I'm rating this as 3 stars when the reality is that we had a 2 star experience but the staff were truly up against it with other members apparently not turning up for work on the day we visited and the drinks delivery not coming so there was basically nothing to drink. Ordinarily I think this would be a 4/5 experience but it wasn't for us.

We booked well in advance as a party of 10+ and on arrival were surprised that the restaurant was near empty, at lunchtime, on a Sunday, in a prime spot, when York was heaving. No problem though, hopefully this would lead to fast service... it didn't.

The poor waiting staff seemed like they were ready to just walk out, a simple request for water for the table to the young chap was met with a look that suggested I'd asked him to drain his body of all its blood and serve us that. The water never came despite three requests.

Food service was incredibly slow to the point the kids were asking when it would be coming nearly an hour after ordering but when theirs arrived it was really impressive, it just took too long between starters and mains.

On the adult side starters were excellent and presented really well but the Sunday lunch was a bit lacking, the meat was decent, the gravy good but the roast potatoes hard and dry, the carrots unappealing to look at but tasty and the plate just lacked "green" to balance things a bit. Other dishes on the table that weren't the Sunday lunch looked really good but were a little cold by all accounts.

They ran out of beer, soft drinks, soda water and more yet we somehow still managed to have a table full of glassware to the point we moved it ourselves to make some room. It was a similar story with plates.

Ordinarily I wouldnt have been happy and complained but the prices charged werent excessive and the starter made up for the disappointing main. We'd have ordered deserts but had been there so long that we just wanted to get out by that point.

I suspect this experience isn't a reflection of how things normally are there and the many favourable reviews seem to confirm this but it was disappointing for us all the same.

I hope they get their staffing issues sorted and manage to get to the point where the day is stress free enough to be able to give diners water when they can't serve any other drinks.

This is the first time I've ever felt the need to ask the front of house staff if they're OK at a restaurant, I felt really sorry for them and we tipped accordingly when normally we'd have been asking for money...

Hubbie and I took advantage of the excellent Eat Out scheme and thought we’d try 31 Castlegate for the first time. We were not disappointed. The food is wonderful. Being both vegan, we tried all 3 courses from the Vegan Set Lunch menu (they are an omnivorous restaurant). Since there were two vegan choices for each course, we ordered both and shared half each. That way, we were able to sample the entire vegan set menu. The food is delicious, well presented & plentiful. For starters, the vegan fishcakes came with a very tasty vegan tartar sauce to add an interesting zing. The crispy warm seitan had a lovely crunchy texture. For mains, the felafel burger was perfectly cooked & very substantial with proper delicious hand cut chips. The seitan stroganoff is to die for – this was our favourite. This time the seitan texture was softer and melted in your mouth, with a tasty creamy tomato and mushroom sauce served with rice and green beans. For dessert, we had the lemon curd mousse filled in a vanilla tuile with raspberry sorbet which was lovely, light & refreshing after the previous two courses. The highlight though has to be the amazing chocolate brownie with the best vegan coconut icecream I’ve ever had. It was quite substantial so we were completely stuffed to the brim and didn’t need to eat anything else for the rest of the day! The staff are very friendly and accommodating and it made a lovely change not to be rushed through our courses since we were there for nearly 2 hours. Both hubbie and I are very impressed and would highly recommend 31 Castlegate. We will definitely be returning as we can’t wait to try the other...

Avoid avoid avoid ! Just had what I thought would be a romantic valentines lunch. Ate my starter then needed to use downstairs toilet. Stains all over toilet, dust, grease & grime collected in corners of room & all over surfaces. Greasy dirty smell. Staff shoes thrown outside all over floor. This area hasn’t had a clean in days if not weeks. Returned to my table & told waitress how dirty toilets were she shrugged & said she would get round to it when she could. Main courses arrived but because of dirty areas downstairs next to kitchen I couldn’t eat the vegan paella. Waitress returned to ask if ok & I said I couldn’t eat it because of the poor hygiene witnessed. Waitress said cleaner is off & shrugged again. Bill came & they wanted to charge me for uneaten paella, I had to ask them to remove paella from bill & waitress rudely said yes but we made it. I explained that the hygiene of the restaurant had put me off. She said the kitchen is different ? She eventually removed uneaten food from my bill but whole attitude was one of excuses & not caring. A dirty unhygienic restaurant to with a staff member that just doesn’t care. Rubbish valentines would...