Priory Hotel Portbury — Restaurant in England

Our Christmas day lunch at the Priory was an absolute disaster.

From the moment we got there, the staff left us standing beside the bar waiting for the manager to seat us, with no one offering to get us a drink by the time the manager finally arrived over five minutes later.

When we were seated nobody took our drinks order until I had to ask. Our waitress was not particularly friendly and got our drinks order wrong, when they finally arrived.

There were no menus on the table as we had ordered some months earlier that would have been helpful to remind us what we had ordered, because when our starters arrived we had no idea who's meal was whos and they arrived as soon as we sat down.

The starters arrived on the table before we had even a chance to order our drinks, there was no bread rolls or anything, which you would expect when paying £80 per person.

We then again we had to ask for more drinks.

The main course arrived with my mums Venison being served cold and over cooked. We advised the waitress of this and the meal was taken and no mentions to what was being done about it. We didn't want her to eat alone so stopped eating. Whilst waiting we noticed our turkey dinners had no pigs in blankets or stuffing as expected from a traditional Christmas dinner. In the absence of menus we looked on line and realised we were missing stuffing wrapped in bacon. After the length of time we waited we ate to prevent our food being cold too.

The staff couldn't have been any less disinterested, after my mum waiting over fifteen minutes and still with nothing to eat, I decided to have a word with the manager who didn't seem that interested but chased it up, and miraculously my mums main course came out straight away. Along with 4 stuffing balls. Which by that point our dinner was almost finished so was rather pointless.

The turkey dinner was at best a regular Sunday roast and had barely any flavour and was quite frankly disappointing for a roast let alone a Christmas dinner.

After this, our waitress left and no one seemed to be looking after us so we didn't even have our plates cleared and again no offer of drinks.

Dessert was nice, the best part to be honest, however when you are spending over £450 for four people on Christmas day, it was a huge disappointment. We had been recommended The Priory by many people and were so excited for our meal but I absolutely will not be recommending The Priory to any of my friends, family or my customers ever again, possibly one of the worst experiences I have ever had.

Nobody said Merry Christmas or goodbye as we left, all in all a Christmas day disaster.

The festive atmosphere was non-existent, and the staff seemed more interested in rushing us out than ensuring a pleasant dining experience. It was a holiday meal to forget for all the...

Visited here for Mother’s Day lunch, had a 3 course menu to choose from, first impression of the restaurant were elegant, classy, country pub settings with an extra sprinkle.

Had 3 course meal for around £30 mark.

Starter - Devon crab cake, expecting alot with this dish and I was very surprised, nice depth of flavour plenty of crab meat filling, and perfect lemon mayo to cut through with acidity to balance the dish. I also had Scallop, King Prawn & Crab Coquille - but no mash topping was being served with this dish, scallops were nice, small bite sized pieces but with plenty of flavour.

Both starters were solid and how starters should be!

Mains - had beef roast with side of mac and cheese.

Very good sized portion with plenty of beef, and trimmings, beef was succulent, soft with depths of flavour, greens were buttery, seasoned well, carrots were soft yet had a slight bite to them but with lots of flavour.

My only issue with this dish was roast potatoes and the gravy, potatoes lacked any roasting imo, think they were shown where the oven is but not put in, more of a boiled potato sadly, not fluffy or crispy and lacked any flavour at all. And the gravy, sadly a bitter gravy it accompanied the dish and did not spoil the plate, but certainly missed any real flavour, no depth to the gravy or shine, a knob of butter and some seasoning would of helped, but sadly this let the dish down.

Dessert - lemon tart, now this was a palette cleanser, very sharp, super lemon and soft nice dessert to end a nice meal.

Overall I would say the dinner and service was solid and certainly did not disappoint for Mother’s Day. Whole family enjoyed it and we all pretty much cleared the plates.

For the price point of around £30 for 3 course I would recommend it!

Overall I would rate this visit 8/10 and would...

Four friends attended on Friday evening and were pleased to discover it was table service. We were served by 2 young ladies as one of them was training and it was her first full shift. She was friendly and although nervous did have interpersonal skills. The main course was very tasty although we were quite surprised at the rise in prices since the last time we had visited. Unfortunately our experience of ordering desert was not so positive. We had noticed on the main menu that there was the option for mini desert and a hot drink but couldn't see this on the separate desert menu we were offered. We queried this and were advised by the other young lady that we had an old menu????????? This issue was resolved and two of us ordered the mini crumble and assumed it would arrive with either cream or custard. When we asked for custard we were informed the mini crumble did not come with custard and if we wanted some it would be 50p for a small jug. Obviously we wanted custard as the crumble would be too dry otherwise. We assumed the mini deserts would be served in the same way as the main deserts only smaller. We could not believe that we had to pay £1.00 for 2 very small jugs of custard. I have never experienced anything like that before. If you feel you need to do this my suggestion would be to charge £6.50 for a mini crumble and custard and then people would not notice. I will be telling my other friends about this which I am sure will amuse them all ( whatever is the world coming to!!) they may still choose to come along to the Priory to experience this practice and hopefully it will keep them...