The Filling Station — Restaurant in England

The pastries and shortbread specialities are an explosion of sweetness and a feast for the eyes and are delicious.

Thing is, that's it.

Over the last 18months I've tried all their usual café fayre. Only the delights I've waxed lyrical about above are worth going through the door for. Oh and the nice clean loo.

They have a highly heated display cabinet for sausage rolls &c and yet contrive to produce a dry grey sausage meat disappointment.

Then there's the coffee. As has always been the case and continues still, the friendly staff are conscientious and don't rush. It is as it would be in an exemplary café. So how disheartening must it be for the crew to be keeping up their side of the bargain as they swap quite the thinnest weakest Mocha, say, I can ever remember. Yeah, yeah oh my coffee's pretty poor. So unimportant, so quotidian. These have been getting harder to ingest over the last year or so and I'm afraid that this time, I took four sips of the over-hot wet stuff and then poured it into the gutter in despair. I've given these lovely people the last of my train journey tea time tenners as I'm resigned to going without unless I can get to Waitrose and back in time for the Waterloo service. Good...

£7 for a hot chocolate that tastes nothing like chocolate and a pan au chocolate that's supposed to be warmed, not blasted in a microwave so the inside is so hot it burns your mouth? Very rarely do I leave a place feeling absolutely robbed. Support your local business? Support ASDA across the road instead.

EDIT: Its staggering and frankly embarrassing that its taken you four months to respond to a negative review of your business but hardly surprising. When you do, you fill it with lies. You did not tell me the hot chocolate would taste different, you stated it would look different. In addition if I tell you that you blitzed the pan au chocolate in the microwave far too long then that's what you did, no if's or maybe's, just an accurate truthful description of...

I was very disappointed with the service I received on a recent trip. I was refused tap water and forced to buy bottled water despite purchasing a coffee and a bacon sandwich (as a previous reviewer has already said this is blatant profiteering). I quite understand the need to make the business work, but a glass of tap water when purchasing other items is surely not unreasonable. In addition I was told I could only charge my laptop for max 10 minutes (never ever had this anywhere before) and even told to unplug the charger despite it being switched off at the plug. Service here really not welcoming and I won’t...