The Orangery Restaurant — Restaurant in England

Took my fiancé here for her birthday for a spa day at the Rockliffe Hotel. The restaurant serves food at Michelin star prices but food doesn't quite cut it. Service is fine and brought up allergy note on reservation at the beginning of meal, but staff should try to smile a bit more and try to be more engaging.

More annoyed than anything else as the restaurant engaged in the age old sin of set menu/taster menu sized dishes on the à la carte menu. As expected left feeling extremely hungry despite spending over £250 for two three "course" meals and a bottle of wine, left the hotel premises a couple hours later to get McDonald's. As for the food itself, okay, but just didn't quite cut it. Lamb was bland, the risotto nothing to shout about (unoriginal), and nothing that I couldn't get at a French Bistro in Edinburgh or Newcastle for half the price and twice the quantity. Bakewell tart for desert was somewhat redeeming.

@Chef check out l'escargot bleu in Edinburgh for three courses done right, or do what Hjem in Northumberland does and get rid of the à la carte menu so people know not to come if they don't want to sit through 8-10 courses. Not sure about the mix of English and French dishes either, local ingredients but no local inspiration. Feel free to invite me back when you've fixed this, and please fix this as you are obviously...

Had a fantastic meal - opted for the 10 course taster menu (vegetarian as I’m not a huge fish fan, of which there was plenty on the non vegetarian menu) the maître d’ suggested if we were to return we could customise next time which is something to bare in mind. Customised menus with our names on were also a nice touch - the food was excellent and the staff were very attentive - without being intrusive - only gripe was the length of the meal - we were there 3 hours with only three other tables in the restaurant, which felt excessive, but was totally outweighed by the food quality and service. Thank you for a...

Richard Allen is a gastronomic genius, my husband is a picky eater and loved every mouthful, exclaiming 'that's so clever' throughout our meal. The service surpassed a 3 star Michellin restaurant we visited in Barcelona.

Dan the someliar is a wine genius, we love desert wine and he introduced us to the most sublime 'Sticky Mickey' which we are now addicted to, his knowledge and passion is infectious- the perfect foil to chefs...