Skylark — Restaurant in England

I had tried calling several times throughout the day to book a table, the phone kept going direct to voicemail.

The website, was not working on the bookings page either, so my girlfriend and I took a risk and drove up from Tiverton.

The restaurant was fairly busy, there was a note on the podium, where you normally wait to be seated, telling us to find a table and a waitress will take our order.

Most of the tables hadn't been cleared or wiped down properly, but we could table that was ok and just brushed a few crumbs off.

We had been there probably only 5 minutes before our drinks order was hurriedly taken (I had to shout "no ice please" as the waitress left the table like a horse at the Grand National) and there was no mention of the specials board, so I went for a wander to see if it was still in use (which it was).

The drinks were delivered and about 10 minutes later our order was taken. I had a mega mixed grill and my girlfriend had the steak Americano. Both were quite nice, my lamb chop was so tiny and cremated that it may as well not have been there and my tiny bit of steak (the sausages made of more meat) was almost solid gristle and I left it. The burger (which I didn't recall seeing should be on there was "ok" as far as burgers go. The peppercorn sauce was like hot cream with a few peppercorns floating in it and the extra portions of mushrooms were over cooked and soggy, sat in fluid. I didn't finish all my meal and my partner didn't finish hers either. We were asked if "everything was ok" with our meals (over my right shoulder a face popped round then shot off), in the first 30 seconds of having them while we were chewing food?!

At that point everything was fine, after that (and I understand it was getting busy having ran a pub restaurant/b&b), the waiters and waitresses, darted around with blinkers on, three times I tried to raise attention! After this I was bored and we decided to finish our meals and leave.

We waited for the table to be cleared, no longer caring about the plates being dive bombed by flies (yes it's summer, but properly cleaned tables wouldn't attract them).

Finding someone to pay was near on impossible, instead I queued at the bar, waited two turns, the barman asked how he could help and then allowed me to be over spoken by another customer who had apparently waited 20 minutes for a waitress!

Then the waitress who served us saw me (probably panicking as we had left the table) and took the payment.

There's no point complaining at the end of a meal and I wanted to go home after a long day at work.

There had been no sign of the lovely managers all evening and I can't help but wonder if they had been away and were aware of what a shambles the place was being turned into.

This place held such good memories for us and it killed our date night!

Whether we shall return or not is yet to be seen 😞😞😞

I couldn't add a new review, without deleting my old one.... So I added my old one to the...

My wife and I visited today for a spot of lunch, we had booked and on arrival, we were warmly greeted and shown to our table. I picked up a menu and noticed that there was a QR code to scan so that we could order online, which made the whole process a lot quicker and seamless.

A member of staff arrived soon after we were seated and asked if we wanted to order any drinks but we said we were fine, yet a few moments later, another member of staff turned up and asked us again, to which I replied that we were suitably hydrated already.

The food arrived between 10 and 15 minutes after ordering and it did indeed look quite the part, I had my traditional scampi and chips, and my wife went for the steak and ale pie. The only quibbles we had were the peas felt like they could have done with a few more minutes to soften up and my wife's gravy pot arrived quite cold to the touch, but this was swiftly rectified by the staff.

The food was very good, the scampi was nice and crispy on the outside with a lovely wholetail on the inside (none of that reformed mush some places serve up). It was also nice not to have constant attendance by staff asking how the meal is - I don't appreciate that, and we didn't get it here, so thank you for that.

In terms of facilities, we didn't use the toilets, but there was a reasonable amount of disabled parking outside. I would say that there was a fair amount of dust to be seen on the surfaces, which could do with looking at, especially when you can draw a smiley face in it :)

On the whole, we really enjoyed our visit and we look forward to...

Long wait for food inspite of it still being relatively early. My two taster dishes intended to be my main (and these aren't under Starters on the online app either) came to our table as starters, so had to be sent back to the kitchen to be kept warm whilst it took a futher 25/30 minutes for my husband's mixed grill to be made and brought to the table so we could eat together. My husband isn't fussy and although the 'Medium cooked' rump steak that came as part of the mixed grill was plated as two separate pieces so the 1" thick chunk was red and very rare, the other thinner piece was still underdone for Medium, my husband left most of the steak on his plate when we left. He said it was grizzly and quote, "That was the worst steak I've ever had, ever. You could hardly even describe it as steak." We'd already paid in advance using the app from the table, had waited longer than we'd like for service to arrive, so just left to continue our drive home, without delaying further to complain. No doubt the remains left on the mixed grill plate at our table would have said volumes if anyone were interested to notice. Sadly we'd not knowlingly return to this chain again, and would seek out a Weatherspoons establishment which is somewhere offering similar fare, using an app via table number and is consistently good regardless...