The Castle Pantry at Highcliffe Castle — Restaurant in England

We arrived at a not so busy cafe in the beautiful grounds of Highcliffe Castle, paid £1 for Sunday parking and decided to go to the Castle Pantry for brunch. Was not advised at the entrance that if you want to sit in the restaurant you still have to join the queue at the entrance to place an order. Once I had to go back to get my coat to queue I placed an order of egg benedict and a full English and two hot drinks. After 40 mins of waiting and the people infront of me in the queue were happily eating theirs, I got up to ask when my food was ready. Told we were next. After nearly another 20 mins, it came out and got an apology for the wait. I took one mouthful of my eggs benedict to see that under the hollandaise sauce, both eggs whites were not cooked and wobbly. Shame after this long wait. So I took them back and asked if I wanted to wait a couple of mins for them to be cooked. No apology from the chef! I said I can't wait any longer and at this point my husband had nearly finished his mediocre full English. I asked for a refund which I had to ask for twice. Was not offered anything else for goodwill. I was so hungry that I asked for a sausage roll which was then refused as they had run out and had to settle for a cheese and onion roll, which I had to pay for! Such a bad experience for such a lovely setting. I was not told at any point there would be a wait for cooked to order food. Staff were friendly but not that helpful and basically couldn't cope with the number of orders coming through. Two other people had similar waiting times to me. We will not be recommending or coming back again. Do not waste your time unless you want a cuppa and cake. I paid £31 for an awful experience and took nearly 2 hours from walking in the door to leaving very...

Food very good and tea pots generously large. Pleasant staff. Be careful if you want a late lunch as the kitchens close early and there's no indication as to when on their website or on their menu. Unfortunately they keep two external doors wide open no matter the weather and we were frozen. It was a very cold day. When we asked if they could close the doors as we were extremely cold, we were told the doors have to be kept wide open so people know they're open! We were shocked. Perhaps a large sign saying 'Open' would be the answer so customers don't have to suffer for the good of profits. It made it a very unpleasant experience although we've been there on warm days and it was really good. My husband who is in his eighties was so cold I had to take him back to the car to warm him up. Health and...

Spent £22 on x2 coffee’s, small piece of cake, bowl of soup and a vegan sausage roll. They took the last vegan sausage roll out of the display and said they would bring it to the table with the soup. 10mins later the soup arrived… where’s my sausage roll? Oh sorry we sold it again. How disgusting selling MY food i’d paid for! As an apology they refunded the sausage roll! No gesture of goodwill or nothing for ruining our lunch because one of us had nothing to eat. Oh and the refund was a handful of 2p & 1p’s as I didn’t trust them to do a card refund properly...