Jenko's Restaurant — Restaurant in England

Food was mediocre at best, coupled with dreadful service and a shockingly poor attitude by the owner.

I would consider myself a regular to this restaraunt, often bringing family and friends along with me for a dining experience however after an unfortunate decline in quality, I think I'll be finding a new restaraunt.

We have had dramas before with vegetarian options here, so as suggested the last time, we called up to book and informed them, then again informed them when we arrived but alas, the vegetarian option was non-existent until we asked for it but by the time we had information of something other than a vegetarian sausage, the rest of us had finished eating, so we decided to decline the offer as we we're preparing to leave by this point.

Essentially this caused us to be fronted with a £22 bill for what was 4 small bowls of vegetarian food. Couple this with the fact that this has happened multiple times, and the degrading quality of food being down to more than just a simple "bad night", we decided to say something which in response, we were offered a £4 discount to bring the vegetarians food down to what is still a mind blowing amount.

The owner decided by this point that he was going to stick to his guns and refused to budge despite us mentioning that we've dined here in peace so many times. He put himself above us as customers and told us that it was us in the wrong. We mentioned that again, as per our previous visits, the food quality was poor, dry and overcooked, and the prices would suggest a dining experience out of a London restaraunt with Gordon Ramsey himself treating us to a BBQ delight. He then told us again that we were wrong with our judgement of the food.

An owner that tells the customers they're wrong about how dry their food was and how poor their service was should sum up this place pretty well. Its a restaraunt with wonderful potential but between the management's incompetence and arrogance, they will more than likely run it into the ground. The customer is always right, unless you go here in which case you'll be wrong, and paying extraordinary prices for rather dry, overcooked food, all whilst receiving a sub par service.

If you're thinking of dining here then you should consider your options carefully. If you're a vegetarian and thinking of dining here, you'll have a better dining experience eating out of a farmers field.

Edit After reading your reply I feel obligated to come back and challenge every claim you've made.

"We have always found something to complain about" - This is a straight up lie. At no point during any of our previous disappointing visits did we complain about anything. "We were given discount/compensation for the poor service" - Again, a load of rubbish. The "discount" we were given was the value of the vegetarian food which you completely failed to deliver on. The food failed to even reach the table so to refer to this discount as compensation is a little bit misleading. We were saying that we were essentially still paying full price for a sub par service and for very dry, overcooked food. " Our prices are extremely reasonable" - Well I admit this is a rather subjective statement, and we did arrive knowing how wild your prices actually were, but the fact still stands that in my opinion, and that of everyone I know who has dined in your restaurant, we all can agree that the food you deliver is simply sub par and not worth half of what you charge. Couple that with poor service and an owner who's arrogance makes him blind to the simple facts and comments presented to him, it's simply not worth the...

I visited Jenko's just before Christmas. Being a log cabin it looked great both inside and out. It had a good sized carpark too.

The bar was the first area I visited, and to be honest it was far too small and felt extremely cramped. Being such a small room it was a bad idea to let people sit around the bar on stalls, this just made a very cramped room even more cramped! There was only about 2-3ft between the wall and the bar stools! Having people sitting around the bar made ordering drinks difficult too.

Luckily, the eating area was much better. A small room contained THREE tables, one table had a range of raw meat, fish and vegetable ingredients that you put into a small stainless steel bowl using tongs. The tips of the tongs were quite small like chop-sticks which made it difficult to pick up some foods. Each tub of ingredients had their own set of tongs too, however there was nothing to stop people using tongs from the seafood tub to pick up meat or something else. Cross contamination could be possible, so this method of eating is not advised if you have allergies.

On the second table was a range of herbs, spices and sauces. So you could create a range of different flavours. However, most of the foods you could create with the available ingredients would be curry or chilli based. I could not see anything like creams, yogurt, coconut, or meat stocks on the table. You could certainly create nice tasting food though, even without ANY cooking knowledge!

On the third table was three large heated tubs of pasta, rice or noodles.

Basically, the idea of Jenkos is to allow customers to choose whatever raw ingredients they want, which will then be cooked by the two chefs on a large cast-iron hotplate. You hand the chef your bowl of ingredients which he tips onto the hotplate, as it cooks it is slowly moved clockwise around the table, with the next customers ingredients being added soon after. Each customers meal is divided by two long pieces of wood. Again, as one customers meal is soon cooked on exactly the same area of the hotplate as the previous meal (due to rotation), cross contamination could be possible. Once your meal reaches the end of the hotplate it is fully cooked and handed back to you on a plate. You can then add either pasta, rice or noodles on the third table.

As it was all-you-can-eat when I visited, customers can also go through the same process again, creating something different each time. This was more fun than eating the food!!!

So Jenko's is certainly different to most restaurants, and I recommend it. But improvements could be made to make it even better, including customer communication via Facebook or email. I NEVER got ANY replies to several messages. Including BACON in the ingredients would...

Not being a spicy food lover we went to experience the 'Mongolian' fair on one of the weekday nights, because all the customers choice of food is cooked on the huge gas fired hotplate in rotation while you wait and food is turned and moved around the hotplate as it cooks meaning that if the person in front of you enjoys a particularly spicy flavor to his/her food as your selection moves around the hotplate some of their spices will inevitably influence the taste of your own food. If you ask one of the waiters/waitresses to take your selection into the kitchen to be individually cooked they are more than happy to accommodate you, at which point you can either go watch the chefs cook the other diners meals or else go sit at your table and await your meal to be served directly to your table. The Sunday carvery on the other hand is absolutely fantastic, all freshly cooked veg's reel cauliflower-cheese, carrots, broccoli, etc,etc (non of that plastic prepackaged and bought in stuff) and for those that like a little something different on their dinner plate selections like garlic infused boiled potato slices served in a cream sauce, creamed mushrooms, cabbage and ham also in a rich cream sauce (sounds horrible but tastes fantastic Mmmmmm) and so much more. Obviously their's the traditional selection of meats, Beef, Gammon, Pork and Chicken legs, but the difference is that you serve yourself to as much or as little as you want and you can go back up and help yourself to seconds, thirds or as much as it takes to sate your culinary desires. We first went to Jenco's around the Christmas period after a friend recommended the place to us for their Sunday lunches and to find that the main dinning room is a huge log cabin with full height glazed gable end looking out across the countryside was a real treat and the Christmas decorations gave that us that real Christmas vibe, but whether at Christmas or any other time of the year we regularly frequent Jenco's just because we can. they also believe it or not serve Sunday lunch takeaways including delivery to local postal addresses that's something I've personally never...