The Black Diamond — Restaurant in England

I'm surprised by the negative reviews... Having been a customer of The Black Diamond on at least ten occasions, enjoying great live events, eating in the tea room during the day time and having fun in the vintage shop over the weekend, I can confirm I've never witnessed bad behaviour from any member of staff. In fact, totally the opposite. I've visited the venue at varying hours and on different days of the week despite time of year or season. I find the pricing in the Tea Room to be relative to the local competition, bearing in mind chain restaurants and coffee shops are not serving fresh produce and charging much more for mass produce microwave food. In addition, I personally feel the lager and cider on tap to be very cost effective. I know other venues in Northampton charging £2-£3 more per drink and you expect to pay more than average for venue hospitality in comparison to your local Wetherspoons where their mark up is incredibly high. Lastly, I've eaten at this venue on at least 7 occasions and never had a problem with 'mould' or 'lack of hygiene'. With all young businesses, there are always improvements to be made but in my honest opinion and experience, I've always had a great time at The Black Diamond and couldn't recommend more for food and events. Probably Northampton's best kept secret! Keep going team BD, you're my favourite local hot spot and look forward to seeing what you...

Update on my previous review. We are not local but really liked the club so reattended (a year later) for The Gatsby evening. My husband suited and booted and me in my charlston outfit, very poor attendance, no atmosphere, no jazz music before the band or during the interval, so it didn't flow. The sound system isn't the best, the band could have played some lovely songs but chose Jungle Book and Mary Poppins.

We attended for the Burlesque evening, better turn out this time. The sound system didn't help the performances. The show didn't flow, comedy parts were good but needed work and didn't go with the rest of the show. The poster made it look like it was going to be a classy burlesque show but as my husband put it, it was a strip show. We left at half time.

We are due to go again in Dec as a friend is performing. Sadly after that, we won't be attending anymore of these type of events at this venue 😫

We had already brought tickets for the 3 events at the same time, lesson learnt. Great ideas but not executed well.

Our first visit here & their first Motown & Soul night. Friendly place, great atmosphere. Balcony seating upstairs. One of our crowd brought sharing plates & the food was lovely & good portions. They do food all day as well as in the evening. We would definitely travel again to attend this venue. They have comedy nights &...

Deeply, deeply disappointing. We've been visiting Vintage Retreat for years, and eaten in all the various iterations of cafe/tea shop they've had. Up until now, the food and service has been excellent.

Unfortunately, not any more.

We visited on Mother's Day 2024 and it took half an hour from ordering to receipt for a latte, an Americano and a scone.

On top of that, the dour faced girl delivered the drinks to the wrong table (despite giving the table number when I ordered, and the tables having prominent numbers on sticks), and forgot the scone. The people on the table had to give us our drinks, and I had to go and retrieve the scone myself.

They had also temporarily stopped taking hot food orders (at prime lunchtime), the scone was literally the last cake left, and we could hear them apologising to every table for slow service.

It's such a shame. The venue is pleasant enough, and we like the little market events they put on, but there appears to have been a change of catering staff, and they appear to be...inexperienced, to put it politely.

Nowhere near enough stock (especially when you know in advance it's Mother's Day, and there's an event on that will bring more people than usual), insufficient staff, and shockingly slow service.

Unless there's a serious improvement, sadly, we're won't be using...