Hencote — Restaurant in England

The location is beautiful with amazing views from the restaurant. However, the service isn't quite up to the standard that you'd expect for the prices.

The accomodation is great in the safari tents. Very cosy, different and dog friendly so we enjoyed our weekend. However, I do feel that they need someone to greet you on arrival and explain how to work the appliances. It's not really obvious where reception is as you have to drive past the accomodation to get to it. The tents come with a log burning hot tub, which is a novelty but you do need to get them fired up yourself. After asking at reception how hard it was to get them up to temperature, the person said it was very difficult, but still doesn't offer to help out, so they know they're difficult, but you still need to work it out for yourself.

There are instructions in the tents on how to get it fired up and working and, having a proper hot tub at home anyway, I can feel when the temperature is right, but the couple across from us repeatedly climbing in and out of theirs because they couldn't get it right.

The instructions state the amount of wood that you need to get it to temperature. However, there is also a wood burning fire inside the tent (very nice and romantic), but this requires the same wood. There isn't enough wood included in the package to use both the hot tub and the fire, meaning you have to pay extra if you want to use both. The money doesn't particularly matter, but the principle of having to pay extra for something you actually need for your weekend isn't ideal. I think I'd have been less offended if they just put the price of the weekend up by £20 on the overall cost.

I feel that the onsite restaurant is aiming for fine dining, but unfortunately, has missed. While the starters were really nice, we both ordered a steak for a main, which was burnt on the outside, making it incredibly difficult to cut. We ordered a side of glazed carrots, which you'd assume would come in the form of a few thin carrots with a light glazing. Instead, we received 5 almost whole giant carrots in a side dish. I'm not sure anyone would have ever finished these or even come close. Less is more when it comes to dining.

I also ordered a cocktail, which was lovely, but I only had half of it because the other half was spilt on the table by the waiter with no attempt to even clean it up. We asked for a glass of wine, twice, as it didn't arrive the first time, but the waitress was very apologetic, so we assumed it was a one-off. However, the next morning (we had stayed in their accommodation) we went for breakfast where I asked for sauce, which again didn't arrive and we had to ask again. The breakfast is below par, I think the black pudding is oven cooked rather than fried as it's incredibly dry and there's no option for eggs - scrambled is the only choice on the menu. It's also the only breakfast I've ever had where you have to ask for butter to put on the bread. Surely this is expected? I'm not a fan of dry toast.

We dined again in the restaurant (because it costs to cancel a booking, otherwise we may have tried elsewhere). The food and service was much better on the second night, however, we had to ask for the bill on 4 occasions over a 20-minute period before it arrived.

I think it's a nice place, but there's definitely a need for some fine tuning. It feels very new and disorganised. I'm also a wine consultant and, although I appreciate what they're trying to do, I feel the pricing for the standard of wine...

I attended one of the bottomless brunch events held at Hencote. Overall it was pleasant enough; food was delicious and younger waiting staff were great. It’s obviously a beautiful venue and the concept of bottomless brunch there is fantastic.

However, there was one older female member of staff/management that was firstly caught rudely criticising our group to other staff, and her tone throughout the afternoon was short and unprofessional and put a real dampener on our day.

Admittedly, 1 member of our group was 5 minutes late to arrive to the scheduled event, and we were not allowed to forget about how “inconvenient” this was for the entire restaurant the whole afternoon from the aforementioned older manager/staff member, while all the younger staff were very pleasant and polite in contrast. We all realise it’s a bookable event with more than one sitting per table, but we apologised profusely and it was not intentional to be stuck in traffic. It’s also a well functioning, experienced restaurant, but probably needs further review if one party is 5 minutes late to be seated and this apparently caused such hassle for the staff and kitchen. These things happen, against all our best efforts, and our one member of our party felt embarrassed and very upset by the treatment from her.

We were not offered to be seated and start our bottomless brunch until all of our party had arrived, but surely this would have been better to start if it was causing such significant disruption to the restaurant. But this option wasn’t provided to us and instead we were interrupted multiple times in the 20 minutes from initial arrival (well before our scheduled seating time) to enquire where the other member of our group was.

We all said we absolutely appreciated that this wasn’t ideal, but to be made to feel so awkward, and to then overhear the manager criticising us meant we didn’t leave very happy customers and all said we’d be reluctant to return in case we got the same cold treatment from the...

The headline: do not book this place for group trips!

I’ve finally mustered up the courage to post a review about this place. I’ve honestly never experienced such strange and unprofessional behaviour in my life.

I booked The Grange for 13 of us, and had had regular contact with the venue about things like getting a private chef. They said it was against their policy, and so we asked if they could provide a chef for the evening - they agreed.

Roll on three weeks before the weekend, and they contacted us to tell us they couldn’t provide the chef. I asked if we could, therefore, find one ourselves and they said only if we got them to sign certain waivers and we did a full kitchen inventory (amongst a lot of other paperwork). We said yes, and everything seemed to be fixed (after a lot of internet searching and panicking).

A week before the weekend and they contacted us to say the owner has said we weren’t allowed to have the chef after all- with over a grand paid and also non-refundable. No apology, no explanation, no attempt to solve the issue other than offering their restaurant (shock).

We arrived at The Grange (a bit browbeaten already!), which is beautiful, and saw that the owner’s house was at the back of it. He stood in his driveway and stared at us as we arrived - we waved, he didn’t - he stared. As a group of women we felt extremely uncomfortable. This happened a lot over the weekend. We also then received an email from reception informing us that the owner had seen we had left a light on from 5pm - 6am.

This was supposed to be a relaxing trip, and honestly what I’ve mentioned is the tip of the iceberg. We felt watched, on edge, and I was pretty worried for our deposit because the place seemed out to grab at any money possible.

It’s a shame because it has the bones of the most amazing place. Hopefully someone else will buy it and it’ll reach its...