Compton Abbas Airfield — Restaurant in England

Wow where do I start! After visiting the airfield for coffee & cake this morning with a friend I was left utterly shocked by a female 'mature' member of Staff. I have to say I cannot praise the young staff up enough, they were all very polite, couldn't do enough for us, service with a smile and had a laugh with the fact that there were no cake on the menu today, this was at 10.30am but by 11am they had managed to source 3 beautiful looking sponge cakes. We ordered coffee when we arrived at 10.30am, coffee arrived at our table at 10.45am, I must say it was lovely coffee and served with a smile from the young waitress, at 11.30am we decided to order another coffee, order was excepted by another lovely young waitress, 'Said Mature female' arrives at our table with our drinks, she promptly informed us that our table was booked out at 12 noon so we would need to leave in time for her to clean the table, we replied 'ok'. At 11.55am we went to pay 'said Mature Female', I politely said to her maybe it would be a good idea if you put a note on tables that are reserved with the reserved time like other places do. Well honestly this was like red rag to a bull with Mature Female! She told us that we should only be sat at a table for coffee for 1 hour 15 minutes and said that's ample time, when I replied that's not long enough she said....Really! and rolled eyes, she then continued to bang on about it with excuses as to why just over 1 hour is long enough, I asked her at this point 3 times to let us pay before this situation escalates, I said we would like to leave quietly but she took her time sorting our bill out but still going on about it, by this time the queue of people was right back to the door and we found ourselves apologising to them all. I have been visiting the airfield for 40 years but never again, I am absolutely disgusted with this females attitude, rude just doesn't sum it up! No where could we find a sign that said you can only have your table for 1 hour 15 minutes for coffee, when we were shown to our table the waitress never informed us. I'm still reeling now after have a beautiful morning ruin. Congratulations to all the amazing young staff that work in the restaurant, keep being amazing! The icing on the cake as we walked away.... Mature Female said..... Maybe this place is not for you! Infront of...

As I can’t do a second, separate review, I am updating this review after visiting again one year later (October 2024). I’m always prepared to give somewhere a second chance but sadly the airfield cafe FAILED again today. They have a HUGE car park, a HUGE picnic area with tables…but they don’t seem to be able to cope with large numbers of visitors. Today all we wanted was a hot cup of coffee but we were shoo-ed outside with about 8 other people in front of us who were equally dismayed to be told the staff needed half an hour to restock!! This was just to get a hot drink! It was quite busy outside (a beautiful sunny day brought out all the aircraft enthusiasts and motor bikers) and yet the cafe/restaurant can’t cope! Apparently a large group of Harley Davidson riders had come all the way from Bridgewater. I’m sure they must have been disappointed. Even the outside hot food/drink cabin was closed. Nobody expects it to be open all the time…but a sunny, weekend day?? We’ve learnt our lesson. In future we will copy all the others who brought their own food and hot drinks.

Summer 2023: We’d been to the ‘old’ cafe and were keen to see the new development. Positives: spacious building and outside. Good parking and lots of picnic benches. Good place to watch planes.

Negatives: slow staff. Four girls at reception when we arrived. No queue, just us. Chat chat…At least a long minute before we were even acknowledged. Sent to bar to order a baguette. Six staff behind bar. Seven customers queuing. Another 7 minute wait. Worse still…post office queue system. If you choose the wrong one…! To put a one queue system in place would be so easy as they have the space. Rubbish choice of fillings. If you don’t like tuna or mozzarella or pesto….forget it. No cheddar. No ham. No chicken. Then we had to listen to the...

What a huge disappointment, went for lunch today after hearing about the new Smokehouse. Between the 2 couples who visited, we had a number of conversations with the restaurant prior to our visit as we were aware they only reopened on Thursday. At no point did they explain the limited menu and the fact that the smoker was not yet up and running as expected. The menu basically had Pulled beef in a bun, Nachos and Mac & Cheese. All of which were underwhelming, extremely small portions and overpriced. We explained that we had a number of conversations before our visit and were not told how limited the menu was but were told by the waitress that it wont really be up and running until next weekend. As we had travelled a distance we decided to stay and have lunch but it was a big mistake. When we provided feedback on the small portions the response was both arrogant and rude from one Waiter who "appeared" to be more senior. We asked about the slaw that was meant to accompany the pulled beef and were told that it was underneath the meat and we could use our cutlery to look for it if we wanted to. On leaving we tried to give our feedback to the lady on the front desk who was busy dealing with other teething problems and were advised to speak to the same waiter who had been so rude earlier so we decided it wasn't worth speaking to him again given our earlier interaction and we left hungry and dissatisfied. I understand there can be teething problems with any new restaurant but setting expectations with your customers could go a long way towards alleviating this and it wouldn't have taken much to put a note on the website explaining that it was an extremely limited menu which didn't really feature the smoker. While the food itself was poor, our experience with this waiter was so bad - would most definitely...