The Hatch Gate Inn — Restaurant in England

I never quite understand the appeal of this place, I’ve had take away and eaten in and been disappointed. We went yesterday evening for dinner and sat outside in a covered area. There were cigarette endss on the floor and in window boxes, an oily ‘tool’ was left on a chair and when we showed it to a waiter he said he didn’t know what it was and walked away, and a 5l bottle of bleach sat bested the table on an empty flower bed, it didn’t feel like an eating area, more a smoking area for staff? However with a knee injury, and children to keep an eye on it was the only non picnic bench available with a view if kids in the park. The table wasn’t clean, but the waiter laid it anyway (badly, cutlery in wrong place/napkins handed loosely, leant over us etc.) The food was average at best, starters tasty, but far oilier than I’d expect for fresh, clean, hot oil. On the menu it wasn’t clear which were the vegetarian options abd they seemed limited (Korna, madras and one other I recall), the madras was far hotter than I’d had before and was inedible (huge portion!), my dad’s jalfrezi was also hotter than he’d expect - we both like our food spicy having travelled in India ourselves! The chicken was good and plentiful in meat dishes, and the kids enjoyed their chips and ice cream (though it was fairly nasty vanilla ice cream!). Service was ok, one waiter was friendly and engaging, one other was clearly new but didn’t seem to listen when you spoke as we had to ask/repeat ourselves several times.

I can’t fault the work they do for the community, they are clearly very popular hence why I’ve persisted. This I think might be my last...

I can only say worse buffet I've ever experienced in 30 plus years of having them the poppadoms smelt disgusting the mango sauce was watered down the mint sauce watered down overall disgusting then when we went up to the counter to start taking from the buffet only to find most of the buffet was missing when we asked him to replace the items what was missing he then told us they don't replace any of it from 19:30 then why didn't he tell us that in the first place before we decided to have a buffet but then it got worse because the items what was there was all dried up and disgusting where they had been in the trays to long I can never understand why they do these buffets on a Sunday only to serve up total rubbish my advice to them is stop serving buffets and just stick to a menu and hopefully they...

The positives were the staff were nice and friendly and food was served quickly.

The food however was one of the worst Indian meals I've had. It was absolutely flavourless and very watery sauce, the chicken was very dry and over cooked and the curry was just very weak and flavourless and more like a casserole than a curry. My partner had a dish with a fair bit of heat to it which was good but there was very little flavour to it beyond just heat yet again. The rice was fine but nothing to shout home about, very small naan bread and smothered in ghee rather than cooked in it so had an unpleasant texture. I wouldn't go back, it just felt very much like a standard English pub decided to chuck an Indian resturaunt on the side rather than having property...