Rock Garden Cafe Bar — Restaurant in England

I booked a table for 2, we were greeted upon arrival and pointed to our table location. It seemed to be relatively busy at first but that was just downstairs and where we were eating there was only 2-3 more tables occupied the whole night. I found it strange that with social distancing in place that we were positioned immediately next to another occupied table, despite all the free tables.

A table nearby still had leftovers in place for numerous visits as a member of staff who brought the drinks volunteered to tell us they were understaffed.

The couple behind us could be heard enquiring about the delay on their food which the staff member replied "Oh sorry, I should have told you when you came in that there was a 40 minute wait on food". They carefully chose to forget to tell us that also.

You order at your table using a mobile app. Since you need internet access to download, install and use the app I expected free WiFi to be provided. There was an entry but when trying to use it I found the signal was pathetically weak and after the slow (almost timing out) page load they wanted more personal details to be provided to another 3rd party company to enable access.

I was not happy with this nonsense for a 1 time visit to a restaurant so opted to use mobile data. The app they use for table service is poorly designed and I left a review on the app store with some pointers for the creators to provide a better user experience. This is based on having to use it to place 4 orders ( drinks. mains, cocktails for the wait & dessert).

The drinks were delivered shortly after ordering, within reasonable time.

Our food came 60 minutes after placing the order. During this time the couple behind us opted to forgo dessert for fear of it taking as long as the main did.

My "Greedy Pig" burger was enjoyable, served on a slate. The salad was ok and the chips served in a metal bucket still hot. The crackling served on the side was incredibly hairy, it was unexpected and I was still dreaming of an amazing diced crackling serving I had earlier in the year. I picked it up but decided against consuming it in the end, not just for the carpet texture but the thin and rigid structure I thought would surely take at least 1 tooth out in our battle.

My partner's vegetarian meal was "Creamy Caribbean Bites" served on a plate, she remarked about the chips being cold and she didn't understand why the fake meat was so tough. I witnessed it, they should have provided a steak knife with that meal. I'm almost certain that most metals would give way under the pressure of her trying to saw these things in half.

For desserts I opted for a chocolate brownie served with vanilla ice cream on top. It was warm but not hot, I recall eating it before the ice cream had melted. It should have been hotter in my opinion.

My partner had a vegan friendly strawberry ice cream sundae, she was very impressed with the amount of real fruit pieces and the taste of the ice cream. I tried a bit too and it was very nice so that was definitely a winner.

The background song selection was pretty good with my partner singing along to pretty much all of them and me also recognising them.

They had a good vegan/vegetarian menu selection.

Overall 3/5 - Let down by the uninformed long wait and poor order process but partially salvaged by the reasonable food and atmosphere.

I would consider going back because I believe they are capable of providing a better experience and everyone has a bad day...

Went for a late lunch/early dinner with my husband and 2 year old son. ordering wasn't a problem as it wasn't busy. wait time for our food was OK. my sons plate came out hotter than the sun so had to request one that wasn't going to cause him burn as we could barely touch it. I ordered a medium/rare steak which came out very well done. my husband had the chilli and chips which was dry and no flavour of chilli. no table checks were done as it seemed staff were more interested in their phones. although our meals were edible they didn't reflect the price we paid. we were quick to eat and leave as anyone with a 2 year old knows they don't like to hang around. whilst getting our sons coat on, get him into his pram and get our things together a serve thought that was the right time to clear our table. As we danced around each other he did ask if everything was OK, we told our meals weren't as great as we had expected but he didn't seemed to care. Just felt like they could of waited for us to sort ourselves out before trying to get rid of us. feels like they lack basic customer service unfortunately. the decor and music is...

My wife and I have been here three times together,and my wife has been there quite a bit with friends and with work colleagues.

My wife always has pizza which she thinks are great.

I've had chicken and ribs twice which were underwhelming and today had a Philli Cheese sandwich.

The filling was tasty enough but it was a very meagre portion but the most awful bit was the dry bread roll.

There was,no attempt to spray a bit of olive or another oil on it and then griddle it to crisp it up,make it softer and tastier.

It simply was a very dry almost stale bread roll.

I imagine that there are no cooks or chefs behind the scenes and that all of the food comes in pre- packed and is prepared on that basis.

The place is very clean,the staff are great and prices are reasonable.

They need to address the poor quality of certain food they offer for sale, some people would want to order other advertised foods other than pizza and burgers and should expect a reasonable standard of quality.

This was my third visit and the third time I was dissatisfied.

We were the only customers too so workload was...