Hawkes House — Restaurant in England

I'll start with the positive, and the only reason they have received any stars, that is the service. The staff were wonderful, friendly and attentive. The atmosphere was very nice. But that's where the positives end. The food was simply diabolical. To start we had tapas. First we had prawn with chilli, the prawns were very over cooked and it lacked flavour. Then we had mushroom with blue cheese. The mushroom was under cooked and it lacked cheese, but I guess the amount of cheese you like is subjective. The final was a chorizo and spring onion bravas. We had a grand total of 3 small pieces of chorizo to the 20 ish small pieces of potatoe. The flavour was nice, but given it was a chorizo dish I'd have expected more chorizo. It came with a side of "Spanish bread" what Spanish bread equates to is under cooked half baked baugettes drizzled with a balsamic glaze. Not good.

We then move on to the main. My partner had rump steak with a garlic butter sauce. The steak was cooked rare which is exactly what we asked for. The rump was chewy but rump often is so we can hardly complain about that. The garlic butter didn't really taste of garlic at all. I ordered cataplana. Which was meant to contain squid, mussels and prawns. There was not a single piece of squid in the dish. The prawn were over cooked and I kept picking shell out my teeth where they hadn't de shelled them properly. The mussels were also over cooked. It came with another undercooked half baked baugette. The dish was basically mussels and prawns with a tin of tomatoes chucked over it, some roughly chopped onions and sod all seasoning, it was awful. It's actually one of the worst dishes I've had in years. We did complain about that dish and the lovely waitress took the price of the dish off the bill. We didn't complain about the rest, although didn't compliment it either. A wall close to where we sat had a massive amout of paint peeled off with what appeared to be damp wall behind. The female toilets were not clean, had the cheapest liquid hand soap possible and one toilet struggled to flush. The men's toilets were apparently not too bad.

When we complained about the dish we said we'd happily discuss it with the chef if they wanted. But apparently the head chef had gone home (despite it being 21:30 on a Saturday night) and the other chefs were busy.

All in all a very disappointing night. The staff and atmosphere is what managed to scrape them by with 2 stars. If I were rating the food alone it would...

Used to be one of my favourite places to go, but recently it's gone downhill. The consistency of the food is all over the place, with one Sunday roast being amazing, the very next week being a shocking mess.

I've had one visit where I've ordered food, sat back down and 20 minutes later been told my choice has run out. I picked something else, but was then given something that I didn't order and wasn't even on the menu!

We've had a reserved sign placed on our table by a member of staff who didn't say a word. We were a little shocked as it was 30 minutes from the time it was placed on the table and we hadn't even had our meals. I called the manager (I assume) over and asked if they thought that was acceptable, that we could've been planning to spend a few hours there. Instead of offering an apology, he said "if you're still here in half an hour we'll move the reserved sign somewhere else". I wiped down the sign and placed it on the empty table next to us. Not acceptable.

On our last visit we were meeting 6 of our friends. I was very hungry so ordered quickly, hoping to get my food asap. My food was the last to be brought out, after waiting 50 minutes. It appeared the staff waited until all members of our party had ordered before putting the order through to the kitchen. Given that it was a very informal gathering and some people hadn't even arrived when I ordered, I mistakingly assumed that it was obvious to just bring food out when it was ready. On the same visit I was also charged 3 times for a single drink, and again, there was no apology from a single member of staff when I went to the bar to rectify this, just a "cash ok?".

I'm not sure what's going on in Hawkes House recently. Someone needs to take a good look at the service and staff training and try and bring this place back to its...

I never leave reviews but this had to be said. My wife wanted to have brunch on her birthday, so we went down and took both our girls (2 and 4). As per usual we were greeted nicely and seated in one of the alcoves, I believe this was the reason for the poor service, as on previous visits being seated anywhere else than the main floor the servers seem to forget about you. After ordering drinks from the nice chap that greeted us, we were waiting around 30 plus minutes before I caught the eye of the manager who then took our order. After another 40 or so minutes a different server came over after we asked what the issue was with the food and she said the ticket hadn't gone through. After we highlighted our dissapointment she swiftly left without trying to make the situation better - well done! By that time our two year old needed to sleep allbeit on an empty stomach which wer'e now dealing with, and our 4 year old is now asking why we didn't eat. Upon leaving without any real apology or empathy we saw the server and manger just look at us as we exited - well done guys, good job! Seriously poor service, bad customer relations and some serious due diligence required. Why did it take us after 40 minutes to ask where the food is? Surely they should be on this, especially as the covers were about half of what is could be. Perhaps the popularity of the place (mainly down to few options in Thornbury) has made them quite lax in other critical areas. In all honesty the place has a 50/50 bad to good service history. If you're looking for a good breakfast/ brunch/ lunch I seriously recommend avoiding this place and visiting the Hideout Lounge. Those guys are ace! These guys are mediocre at best....