Jenkins & Sons | Restaurant & Bar in Penn Hill — Restaurant in Great Britain

A polite 2 stars: It was clean and the staff acted friendly.

I have visited a number of places, and I have enjoyed meals in over 58 countries. Occasionally, I am taking my family out on a Sunday, and we wish to thoroughly enjoy our time - whatever the cost.

Coming to this restaurant:

We got greeted by a young waiter, who asked us to leave within 2 hours, due to a 'high volume' of guests. Well, we would not have stayed longer with a 15-month-old child.

At the table, we then selected our food only to find out that certain sections of the menu - about 1/3 of it - could not be ordered. We re-selected, and - to our surprise - 2 of 3 simple dishes could not be ordered again. It is at this point when we typically leave. However, my wife was in a good mood, and we shrugged it off.

The food:

This is probably going to sting, but in my dear friend Gordon's words: 'bland', 'raw' and 'unseasoned' - not even a grain of salt on it. My child's reaction to the chips was a deserved toss onto the floor.

Asked for ketch-up to brighten the mood, and even that was not available. One would think this to be a standard in a place like that ...

On the up-side: the meat was fresh, although I do not understand who would 'bake' chicken without skin, and serve it dry and - as mentioned above - unseasoned.

Verdict:

Avoid! It is not worth the premium that is...

Painfully slow service, young inexperienced waiter needs more training and guidance ,We had a prebooked group of 12 and it was 55 minutes from order to food on the table.No apologies. For desserts we actually wrote down and gave them our orders as no staff actually bothered to ask us if we wanted dessert. We had to wait for that as well, as THEY said they had to serve another table their mains first?? The Sunday Roast was actually quite nice tasty , very tender beef, I'd recommend the duo of meats for only £2 more. Desserts presentations weren't great, a snapped biscoff on top luke warm brownie. The dough balls were hilarious , More like dough pellets, chewy, not recommended . There were a hell of alot of them though.There was supposed to be a dessert of the day, but we never found out what it was. As a group who support and regularly visit independent restaurants for Sunday lunch time, we think this place could be very good,...

Lovely friendly staff but..... the food does not live up to the hefty price tag. I was expecting something really good for £16.50 for a beef and ale pie. The beef was tough, it lacked flavour and was very dry. My wife questioned whether the mashed potato was instant as it was grainy and insipid. My wife asked for some extra broth for her halibut as her meal was also dry. Extremely surprised to be asked to pay an extra £2.00 for this when the dish was £18.50 in the first place! We did complain to the manager who was very pleasant but did nothing to appease - despite the poor food and our complaint, we still had to pay an extra £2.00 for broth which is galling when the meal was so dry in the first place. Will definitely re-visit for a drink but won't be eating here again. Shame as we are...