Cracking Crab — Restaurant in England

I am visiting Cornwall at the moment as are many UK holiday makers in these strange times and my girlfriend is a big seafood fan. Being near the coast it was not exactly a challenge worthy of a cancelled Olympics medal to find a place but being a fan of reviews I took a look around and found this place which is a half hour drive from where we are staying. Feeling that some decent food and a good portion of Brownie points were in the bag I called the number to book. The phone was just a recorded message saying that you could only book online which I tried to do only to find that it was fully booked. The website did however very helpfully say that everyone can just turn up without a booking and eat on their decking. When we turned up the barrier to the car park read our registration and we got parked up easily enough. The signs took us to a desk outside where the entrance was roped off like a closed museum exhibit and a sign instructed us to wait to be seated so we waited........and waited...........and waited with less people present than a Covid conga line. I rang the number on the door which was 20 feet away but nobody answered. Eventually we went past the rope (not very British I know) and knocked on the window. A waitress came out and told us that they were fully booked and that the decking was closed. We told her that the website and automated message told us to turn up and she looked as panicked and lost as a Prince Andrew publicity agent and told us to wait while she fetched someone so we waited again.........and waited.........and waited. Eventually somebody else came out and said that they were fully booked and that the decking was closed. I thought that it was a good job we took the time to wait so long to hear that exact same thing again. I then found out that because we had come through a barrier which had taken our registration number I also had to pay £2 to get back out despite the fact that all we had done was drive for half and hour and turn up to find.............they were fully booked and the...

I booked for dinner with my wife, we arrived about 8.15, were sorted to by staff quickly and service throughout the night was good. The meal started relatively well with starters, i had fried prawns which were decent, light ish batter which was not over cooked, i could still taste the prawns so they were nice, my wife had mackeral which was a good portion size but food taste was so overpowered by the red pesto which was dumped all over the bowl. Moving onto the mains the food was a huge dissappintment however. Simply put, it is not worth the price you're paying. I had monkfish, decent portion size of fish, but all i could taste was the salty streaky bacon it was wrapped in, sauce was tasteless. The worst part was the mashed potato that came on the dish, it was dreadful. it was dry and had developed the hard crust on the outside that mash does when it's been stood under lamps for a long time or reheated. for nearly £28 for that course alone i expected considerably better. the menu said our mains came with our choice of vegetables or salad, we were not given a choice, we were told it comes with fries and a selection of vegetables, when we asked they said it comes vegetables only. The fries were soft, mushy and dry as if they had been cooked and left out for a long time or reheated in a microwave or something. The vegetable bowl that came, the only way to describe it was hilariously bad, and we had to laugh at it for the price we were paying. It was a wet soggy sloppy bowl, it consisted of 3 slices of corgette, 10 peas and a full bowl of leaks, which were so sloppy and over cooked we didn't eat any after trying them. Overal, good service, food leaves so much to be desired, and costing just under £60 for 2 main courses, you should receive better quality food. I would not return for food again and...

Having visited numerous times historically without issues, we’d been looking forward to our family meal for eight. There is always an air of trepidation when you arrive and it doesn’t appear that you were expected despite an advance online booking, followed by online confirmation when prompted by email, we were still asked 3 times whether we had a reservation.

Once seated, menus took a while to arrive, and disappointingly, little had changed on the food front since last year’s visit, aside from the prices, which is expected in the current climate.

That said, almost £26 for a chicken breast with sauce and a garnish, and £12.10 for a large glass of wine must be making a handsome profit.

Confusion about the number of starters ordered, and a missed and delayed main course.

Desserts are where my words of warning come in. Ice cream on the menu is £3 per scoop, yet when questioned why it is charged at £3.30 on your bill, the response ‘Oh, our prices have increased and we must not have changed all the menus yet....’ doesn’t really stack up.

No apology, no offer to rectify the pricing......

Couple this with the ‘erroneously charged’ £3.95 per pint of blackcurrant squash, the lack of clear advice or presentation of an allergens list for desserts gives plenty enough reason not to return.

I’m sure that my review will not concern those in charge, as there’ll be a long queue of people to fill our cancellation for next week, 99% of whom will not question, much less notice being...