The Lamp Room — Restaurant in England

Aarrrgh! Wish I wasn't writing this because I'd heard such lovely things about this place for over a year before we tried it. Firstly we booked for my birthday back in March this year and was told only a maximum of 8 people were permitted to 1 party so that limited me on invites.... gutted but hey ho there we go, everywhere has its thing. We pre payed the 80 pound deposit as £10 per head to secure the booking which was fine and expected. We arrived on the night and waited an extra 15/20 mins for our table, which again is to be expected sometimes. Our meal was brought out after about 40 minutes wait which was frustrating as we were starving and had 2 drinks each by this time and we were starting to feel a little bloated and sickly waiting. Our meal came out which was the tapas and it was nice I got the surf and turf and the other lying thing wring with it was the steak was over done and very chewy and grizzly. Anyway moving on..... I also ordered the lobster Thai red curry which was my favorite it was lovely tasty and I was sharing with my other half and didn't wanna share this dish I wanted it all to my self..... I wasn't greedy I shared it haha. The lobster was chunky and mouthwateringly good. Everything else we ordered was nice too. Everyone enjoyed the tapas and the night was a good one. On paying the bill we left happy but confused as we were all racking our brains as to how it cost so much??? We went home and thort nothing of it... obviously had a few to many. The next morning I woke and realised we had all payed an extra £10 on the bill each as they didn't minus the deposit at the time of paying the bill. I contacted the lamp room who immediately rectified the problem and wired the money straight to my bank account. Al in all a good experience. Secondly..... we went last night as a party of 3 myself my son and my partner and we ordered 5 tapas and 2 extra dishes. Service was good, the food was nice but a few things didn't sit right with us.1 being the Korean spare ribs..... spare being the word, there was not a picking on them we have ribs all the time and these were not what we would call ribs. The bairn was gutted, he also had the surf and turf and again the steak was chewy and tuff and it's colour looked as if it had been boiled not fried..... he left most of it but enjoyed the mussels clams and prawn. My lobster curry which iv been hankering for since March was tasty but very little lobster in it compared to the dish I had in March and a little dry. My chilli beef was tuff and dry also. Bit of a let down to be fair. Expected big from this little place and both times there's been something that's saddened us. We love our food and so does our son but don't think we'll be back in a hurry...... my God when I discovered nandos we were there 5 nights a week till we just got sick of eating the same stuff but we still bang on about how nice it is even though we ate that much chicken we sickened our selves in the end..... I was hoping this place was gona have same effect on us and that we of gone often and tried everything on the menu but I am sorry to say I won't be trying much else as 2 let downs are enough. We will continue on our quest to find a good genuine place to...

Having been to the Lamp Room numerous times before, I find it some what disappointing to have to write a review that isn't positive.

A large group of us visited this past Sunday for mother's day. The usual excellent menu had been replaced with a rather dull and unispirong menu mostly consisting of roasts with no specials available and no main course seafood based meals (which is usually why the lamp room is so good). The lobster pasta main being the exception to this but being £30 plus per person wasn't an option for us.

The level of service we received was hit and miss, the younger waitress lovely and pleasant.. The older waitress abrupt and unhelpful, making a point that despite spending quite a large sum of money out table was only booked until X time. Not really want you want to hear when your eating, literally being pushed out the door.

The food - really not good and very overpriced! A few members of our party had a starter x 2 to make a large portion of a seafood dish (as was mentioned no seafood mains). Confusion arose around this, with one waitress saying it was totally fine, the second one (the one previously mentioned - limited customer service skills) told us we couldn't. We eventually managed to be served this as a large portion and those that had it said it was very good. Unfortunately the same can't be said about the roast dinners. I don't go somewhere for food presentation, I go because it tastes good. That said having your meal presented to you like it had been dropped onto the plate by a Lancaster bomber isn't the most appealing of sites. 4 members of our party asked for no root veg on our lunches - we all received root veg. I suspect this is to mask what would have been pitiful portion sizes if you removed the root veg. The lunch itself was served cold especially the beef. I've genuinely had better Sunday carverys at a chain pub. Genuinely disappointing and I shall not be returning. Unfortunately you're only as good as...

I do feel guilty writing this but my family and I agree we'd be unfair in not sharing our experience. We went for dinner so lunch & breakfast menus we couldn't comment on. The venue is stunning great location easy to park and it's trendy and housekeeping was spot on. However .. sadly food for us wasn't all we expected. The quality of meat used was notable across all the dishes we tried chicken was thigh or wing meat on the skewers and had bits that at home we would cut off ... tendons and such like ...it was also very dry as if they'd been prepped a while ago. Chorizo tasted almost synthetic and had a lot of gristle and so this affected the scotch eggs as well as the halloumi and chorizo and the hotshot parmo ... Parmo was good again though the chicken itself didn't taste of good quality and the meatballs ..same story. For myself the best of the dishes on our table were the tempura fried veg - which was in fact beautiful...and the haddock which also was really good. Aside from this upon food arriving at our table and being asked if we were all good we had no revisits ..despite 4/5 staff members being in close proximity - both myself husband and oldest son had empty glasses for some time and we were not approached to ask if we might like another drink. Then we waited and waited for the table to be cleared - it was not busy. So to be helpful we began to stack the plates so that our smaller kids didn't knock anything over. Again waiting for the offer of table to be cleared ...a drink...desserts ... A coffee? ...nothing ...we sat so long we decided to Google somewhere else for dessert and walked up to the bar to ask for the bill on our way out ...it was sadly underwhelming and we had driven a considerable way to try this place ... Has the potential to be unreal but quality of meat used and service lets this...