Revolution Durham — Restaurant in England

Ok, let's start with some of the positives. Place seemed reasonably clean (didn't use toilets though), lovely views out onto the water and electric heaters above the windows were great, seeing as it was a bleak and wet day. Easily found a table as only 3 others occupied at 12.15 noon. A young lady came to take our order in good time and the drinks came shortly after. Unfortunately, it went a little downhill from there. We waited 35 mins for the food, which I consider to be a slightly over average wait (based also on there being only 2 other tables ordering food in front of us, 2 people at each). We mistakenly thought the food would be good after an over half hour wait. I'd ordered a chilli burger, my husband a buffalo chicken pizza and daughter mac n cheese balls (of which there were 3 for £6, no indication of the amount on the menu, which would be good). Almost immediately I saw a hair sticking out of my burger on the right side, it must have been mixed in with the chilli or lettuce or whatever. Definitely wasn't mine, it was long and brunette!! I discreetly removed it and didn't make a fuss as my husband had been getting fed up and was hungry. He soon noticed I was picking at my burger and mostly the bun and staying away from that side. The burger may I add, although seemed fully cooked, was luke warm. No staff members came up to see if everything was ok and then to be honest, after hearing them telling other customers who were coming in that there was a 45 minute wait, I just couldn't be bothered. My husband managed half of his pizza but said the chicken was dry, chewy and tasteless, regardless of all the sauces it was smothered in, maybe that's the way it's supposed to be, if so, he won't be ordering that anywhere again if that's the case. I also tried some and I really couldn't tell what meat it was! I told my husband about the hair and we both decided we'd had enough. Goodness knows why I didn't complain in the first instance, makes my stomach roll thinking about that hair and how I tried to pick at the other side, but that's on me. When we went to pay, credit to the young lady behind the bar. She asked if everything had been ok and that's when my husband said that it wasn't (he "never" complains). He briefly explained about the hair and the seemingly low grade meat on the pizza. The young lady apologized and removed the burger meal from our bill. We couldn't take it out on her, but did express our disappointment and appreciated her effort to attempt to redeem our experience a little. I'm not sure if there were new staff in the kitchen, staff shortages or if hair nets/hats are worn or hair tied back during food prep. Reading other reviews, it seems there are some areas that need addressing. I'm a fair person and it is unusual for me to leave anything below 3 stars. Oh, daughter's salt n pepper chilli fries were...

I'm on a bit of a bad run of luck recently. We visited here 14/09/24, we were the only table upstairs in the conservatory part, and the service was absolutely shambolic.

We were here for 12, the young gentleman serving must be new because he was more intent on chatting to the other server behind the bar than carrying out service.

Upon entering, there is a huge sign outside that says all pizzas £5. When we go in, I ask about it, and the server says, I have no idea about it, says £11 on the menu.

After ordering our drinks, we were served with 1/3 drinks to the table. 10 minutes go by and i notice the second of our lovely refreshing beverages sitting on the bar waiting to be delivered for the last 10 minutes. The third drink, just a mirage.

Eventually I have to get up from the table to go and ask if that was our drink, it was, alas it was delayed on it's journey to the table because "I'm just finishing off inputting your food order"

So now we have our drinks and we're just sitting waiting for food. 1 o'clock and we are finally delivered some food. A chicken skewer starter and a mac & cheese main, unfortunately the server putt the mac through as a starter, which although tasty, was tiny.

The vegan burger and fries was rated a solid 2/5 as it was cold. The chicken vegan wrap was a more solid main and was moderately warm, so that was always a plus.

When the two vegan mains arrived we asked for some vegan mayo. The young guy went to go get them from downstairs, then stood at the bar for 5 minutes chatting whilst the food went even colder. I decided to ask a different server and they said "we don't serve vegan mayo". 5 minutes later the mayo arrives and I give it a try, to confirm it is certainly not vegan mayo. (This just meant I had 2 mayo's to go with my chicken skewer starters).

Ultimately this was an abysmal experience. Whilst we were there another table came in and ordered drinks, where half their drinks were brought to the table, the other half left on the bar. On another table a father was furious as he'd been asked to moved tables with his child for the third time.

I'd seriously avoid this place as the food was bang average, the service was terrible and it wasn't the...

A not so bottomless brunch!

My friend booked bottomless brunch for her birthday here, it was originally for four of us, then due to people being ill, it ended up just being the two of us. She tried to contact Revolution for two days, including leaving multiple voicemails, to try and amend the booking. But nobody bothered to pick up the phone or return her messages. She had already paid for four people, which is a lot of money! When we arrived at 13:30, we explained that there was only the two of us, we were asked if we had tried to contact them, and we explained yes! For two whole days. We were then told we couldn't get a refund and would have to spend that full amount there. This wasn't ideal but we thought, we may as well do that to save any hassle. I must add we were there for two hours, so we assumed it was plenty time to spend that money. How wrong were we! Not only did it take numerous attempts to get someone's attention to order a drink, when we had ordered it, it would then take at least 20 minutes for them to be given to us. In the whole two hours there, we had three drinks each, from the brunch menu. We tried ordering more drinks from the main menu with the money we had to spend, to be told we couldn't use that extra money until we had finished the allocated brunch time. This seems ridiculous as we had already spent that money, I was then told we could use it now that the brunch was over, but I explained we had plans (as it was my friends birthday) I then asked if we could at least have that remaining money put on a gift card for my friend to use at a later date, again, I was told no. This is absolutely absurd. I understand that notice needs to be given, but that was attempted! The staff here need to pick up the phone or listen to voicemails. It is clearly understaffed here and the management need more training! Extremely disappointing, do not recommend at all. Turtle bay is...