The Yewdale Inn — Restaurant in England

The Yewdale Inn is a beautiful building constructed in slate. It holds a prime position in the small village of Coniston. The Yewdale is a cafe, restaurant, bar and accommodation. The rooms are price fairly I think with the bigger and better positioned at the front and the side further away from the kitchen. Unfortunately our room, number 2, was half over the kitchen and looks out on the 4 parking bay car park. It also gets the noise from the kitchen. It would have been good to have the option for upgrading to one of the other rooms. So, if you book at this beautiful Inn avoid rooms 1 and 2. Sorry but it's true but cheaper! The bar has two sides the smaller part doubles up as an extension of the restaurant. The larger part is livelier and this is where you'll find the locals and their dogs. Meals are also served here. The Inn is decorated with paintings by local artists, which are available to purchase. As you go up the stairs and they turn to the right there is a ledge with a plant on and a chair, why a chair? To fill up space, to put it there for when it is need in a room or just an item to think and ponder about. Unfortunately, the landing was also graced with bags of I guess dirty linen, these. Grew from two on the second day to three on our third, not really what you want to see. The staff are also friendly, the lady who works in the cafe and does shifts in the restaurant. Sorry I don't know your name, but you are a 'star'🌟 and I hope the boss knows that. When she saw I was on crutches she offered to serve me items from the breakfast bar to save me going. You are also very friendly and pleasant to talk to. The food at the Yewdale Inn was tasty and locally sourced. The breakfast menu was split in to several options. My husband's favourite was the full English, then there's a vegetarian option, a smaller sized English, grill option in buns, cereals, on toast options. Or if you're like me, make your own up. Everything we are was hot, well positioned, apart from the ice cream, come on now £1.50 for a small scoop! I did however opt not to have the cream on top. Two poor little scoops in a large sundae glass, I nearly cried. Let me move on, we only ate in the restaurant once out of choice but the menu was varied and from what we managed to sneak a peak at it all looked excellent. The Yewdale Inn also holds a 5⭐for kitchen hygiene which is excellent. Apparently for walkers and climbers there is a drying service incase of wet weather which kinda goes with Coniston. There are plenty of leaflets for places to go. Weather forecasts are printed out daily for those who need to know for climbing and walking. Bus timetables are printed out on request. Warning, Coniston is the end of the line for buses(apart from the school stop) and when we were there buses were being cancelled. In our case we had the option of waiting an hour and a half or splitting a cab fair which from Ambleside to Coniston cost just over £21. The bus service is great and runs close on schedule. You must check the bus timetables for changes as buses can be cancelled with out notice and you can be left stranded. Point to remember if you have travel pass card it can be used on the buses. The bus fair for a single day pass, was just over £8 for the central Lakes if you want to travel further the cost was somewhere over £11. With these tickets you can jump on and off the bus as many times as you want, obviously wait for the bus to stop. Some of the buses are open top to give a better view. The roads from Coniston to Ambleside some of the roads are a bit hairy to say the least and you'll find trucks millimetres from you. The Yewdale Inn is beautiful as is the Coniston scenery, try and give...

This is a two part review, based over two visits at Easter 2023 and Easter 2024. Please read both parts to get a balanced view. The 5 star review is based on an aggregate of the visits:

April 2023 - A few days ago, on holiday in the Lake District, we ate a poor pizza lunch at a place called Casa Bella in Keswick. Smothered to suffocation in cheese, and expensive to boot, I took the unusual step of writing a 2 star review of the place on Google Reviews, something I would never normally bother to do. So I feel it's only fair to review this place as well and let the folk at Casa Bella know, just on the billion to one chance that you ever read this, that The Yewdale Inn in Coniston know how to do pizza. Wood fired, delicious, less expensive and first class. Friendly service, pleasing ambience, it was a completely superior dining experience to the one we had in Keswick several days earlier. Eat here, it is very good (and if you work at Casa Bella, come here for pizza-making lessons).

April 2024 - After our excellent experience here last year we drove across the Lakes from near Keswick to experience once again the wonderful pizzas, enduring a child feeling car sick on the windy road on the way here to make it. Sadly, when we arrived they casually mentioned that their pizzas are, in fact, only available at the weekends. Not only that, the pizza option on the children's menu isn't available either. This isn't mentioned on their web site at all, in fact it's full of promoting their pizzas and Italian cuisine front and centre, and we must just have just hit it lucky and arrived on the weekend last year (Iater checked - we had come midweek last year, and been served pizzas fine so their policy must have changed). So, no nice pizzas for us and a wasted, hour-long journey. No nice service either, it would appear, some gruff bearded bloke is now blundering about the place with a thick Yorkshire accent dumping drinks on people's tables with a level of grace that indicates he's not long for the hospitality industry. If you only serve certain foods on certain days, advertise it up front, you massive cretins. Disappointed, and won't be coming back.

Ps: just been served my food on the second visit. Unpalatable, rock hard pastry on a pie and really unappealing and unsatisfying thick chips served with a pot of gravy (that wasn't mentioned on the menu) for a bargain £16. To be fair, when he collected my plate the guy saw I'd eaten hardly any of my pie, asked why and when I told him the food was awful he did offer me a free drink. I declined. Also, soap had run out in the gents toilet, asked them to replace it and they brought moisturising hand lotion instead. Barely any loo roll in the women's loo either, reported a family member. Really basic hospitality fails all over the place, never known an establishment fall from grace so far so fast. Not coming here again....

Our party of 6 visited last week for a Birthday meal, we were staying in Coniston on a walking break. When we arrived at the bar there was already an altercation going on as another party were asking for a 'tab' and were told 'Managers orders no tabs as people complain and don't pay' We had booked a table the day before even though we were told by the staff 'don't need to book it's dead' When we arrived someone else was at the table we booked-a member of staff said we were 15 mins late even though it was only 7.10 and we had booked for 7.30, the small blackboard with our name and time was on the bar and had not been put out to reserve the table, there wasn't another table to accomodate 6 of us and so a very very rude waitress went to the people sat down and started to wave the blackboard at them telling them they would have to move...she was so rude they left, she came to wipe the table saying 'we know where they've gone but don't know where they've been ha ha so I'll wipe the table!' her comment was totally unacceptable and the people at the next table commented to us 'how rude' Our food arrived...oh dear, burnt Pizza's so badly burnt we couldn't eat them, the same waitress came over and started to tell us how a charcoal oven worked! when we said we didn't want anymore she very sarcastically said 'what would you like me to do Sir' my husband said surely a refund should be offered at which point she started shouting 'I don't like your attitude' so the whole of the pub could hear at this point we understood why the bar didn't offer a tab service, I said I wanted to take a picture of the burnt food but before I could she whipped the plates away with another waitress helping her, it was so very embarrassing but she didn't seem to care, she then said in a very loud voice ' Sir is getting a full refund' one of the bar staff said her name was Dee but when I said I would be reporting her her she starting laughing and said 'Dee was a name the staff used for people like us' Another member of staff came over to issue a refund We had spent over £120 and the refund he gave was £25! It was a terrible experience that we don't ever want to have again, we visit Coniston many times a year as we have a house there, we will only be eating and drinking at The Coniston Inn, Black Bull and the...