The Watch House — Restaurant in England

Got there at about 11:30 looking for a late brunch. Staff ignored us as we stood at the doorway waiting for a table, preferring instead to hang around the pass waiting for orders.

I finally had to approach one member to ask what the protocol is, and he scoffed back saying to wait where we are as they were busy. Usually, we'd walk out (like some other customers had), but the food looked that good that we decided to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Finally got a table about 20 minutes later and then had to find someone else to ask for menus. She said they were in the middle of changeover to lunch and so they weren't any available. Bit odd and a bit gutted to have missed breakfast/brunch, but we decided then to get a coffee and wait until we were 'allowed' to peruse the lunch offerings.

I had to then approach the same member of staff to get a lunch menu 10 minutes later and became even more miffed to have found that it was only really pizza and fish - none of which we particularly fancied.

The one star review is simply for the fact that I feel the place conned us out of a coffee - which was average at best.

The staff should have acknowledged us at the door and informed us of the situation with the changeover. We could have then made the decision to go elsewhere instead of wasting 45 minutes on a substandard coffee and appalling service.

Will be willing to give it another go as the food looked good, but hopefully the service...

We turned up at about 14-15 on Thursday 17th, and was informed we would have about a 5 min wait for table......so Far so good, we were shown to our table and sat down with a menu, then a family of 6 arrived and they only had a table of 4 remaining with another table for 2 in a different position, so as a gentleman I offered to move to said 2 person table so they could make table of 6 up with our old table with the '4' table, both us and the staff were very pleased with this!!!!......however it goes very steeply down hill from this point on!!!! We had been sitting there for a good 15 mins before any member of staff had approached us to take our order, but in the meantime they had gone to the table of 6, allowed them to order and delivered their food before they even asking us what we wanted, and then we had to wait 35mins for 2 cream teas...........now I'm pretty sure even a kettle boils quicker than that!!!! So not only had we had the courtesy to allow another family to sit down but they even get served and ate before we even ordered!!!! And as a side note, we sat in an outside covered area so we were out of the wind, however one side was slightly raised to allow for heat to disperse and was told it couldn't be closed, 10 minutes later a family of 3 sat on a table beside us, asked the same lady if they could close the shutter because of the draft and bam 20seconds later the shutter is being closed for...

The whole experience was like a car crash in slow motion, the cafe inside was clean, the staff were happy an obliging but the smell of wet dogs in there with there owners was surprising also dogs barking at each other was another put off. Now the food, yeah expensive as in very expensive for what you get. My wife and I ordered Plaice served with a sauce with rocket as a meal, what turned up looked nice but I have seen bigger fillings in a sandwich from Morrisons. 3 tiny pieces of Plaice and I mean tiny (the size of a cashpoint card and a half) not in breadcrumbs, not battered but fried, the homemade sauce was like a hollandaise sauce mixed with English mustard and a dozen small garden peas mixed with it, with a stringy piece of rocket on top. We thought it would come atleast with a portion of chips aka "fish meal" but alas it didn't, chips were an optional extra for £3.50 I found out whilst walking out of the restaurant. You would've found it easier to serve it up on a side plate rather than a plate that would cater for a Sunday roast and to pay £15 each for those pieces of Plaice each is extremely expensive. Oh and I was given a fork and NO knife which I bought up in conversation at the till. My review on this restaurant is low because of the standards of quantity of food, price of food and...