The Gatehouse — Restaurant in King's Lynn and West Norfolk

Having visited while on holiday last year totalling 4 times we had an incredible enjoyable, friendly visit. However, this time 31st August 2025 poor is an understatement. Miserable and low morale staff, incredibly low staffing level resulting in slow service no greeting at the door after waiting where the podium and iPad was placed we had to queue in the bar queue for a member of staff to speak to us. We were shown to our table and that’s where it continued going downhill. We used the app to check if there were any Sunday dinners available to which at 6.30pm the answer was no. We ordered 2 tikka masala’s and a scampi plus starters and drinks. The drinks were quickly served positive but a short while later we ordered an top up and being in eye shot of the bar noticed it was poured and the bar staff member then asked another staff member to bring it to our table the staff member asked was none stop working and the answer was obviously no so the bar staff who poured the drink brought it over and this was the conversation “moretti ok” the drink was slid onto the table bar staff walked off leaving empty glass! Food, starters were nice and tasty. Then our long wait of 15-20minutes started for the plates to be cleared. Then the mains arrived. Scampi, not crispy but overall nice and enough food on the plate. Tikka masala’s where do we start, portion small as shown in the pictures, onion bar-jay burnt. But, these meals had obviously been under the heat lamps waiting to be served as the tikka masala was red hot in the middle and like warm around the outer and the rice was dry and stuck together. Taste was mainly a cheap ingredients and no flavour taste to which for all the greene kings around the country we’ve visited has never tasted or been served a small meal. The staff never spoke or even asked if the meal was ok as we left early due to the poor experience.

To conclude watching what was happening when tables were eventually cleared between customers. The tables were not cleaned just cleared and left. But I’d noticed under one table a serviette had dropped from the last customer onto the floor this was left as the seats were not pushed back in by staff and on the floor walkway a serviette was again on the floor to which the staff all walked over for the duration of our 1hr 20mins visit. I wished I was a paid restaurant critique as I’d of took the opportunity to ask the staff and restaurant management what has happened since November 2024 for service to be so drastically poor. Sadly we will not be returning to...

Me and my family visited this place quite often for a meal on days out, and it was always brilliant food. Today was a completely different experience. We came as a family of 4, 2 adults and two kids, all had a starters and main meals. Our bad experience started when we noticed a bright pink lipstick on our daughters apple juice glass, went to the bar , and only got "sorry about that". We got that drink replaced with fresh apple juice, and clean glass. That was okay, I thought, mistakes happens sometimes.

Starters came , and deep fried hallumi and chicken strips were decent.

Mains came, we had 3 steaks, and they all were very chewy, couldn't chew it completely, like a rubber. We ordered 2 peppercorn sauces , and we got a table spoon amount of sauce looking like a curded egg in runny sauce. Looked afwuf, and for price £1.50 per pot of sauce that was disappointing. We kindly asked a waitress to get us a new normal looking sauce, on what we got response : "oh this is just came out of steamer, and I don't think in the kitchen they will do anything about it" Lady left with the sauce and came back with slightly bigger sauce jar , with the same curd looking sauce. Waitress didn't offer any other option to that bad looking sauce , it's like we had no option but to get on with it.... I had a mix it up meal, and I had a steak on hot plate, and another plate was with salad and potatoes. I started eating a salad first and noticed a fatty loose bits in my salad, looking like chewed up beef fat. Asked same Waitress lady what is this in my salad , and that it puts me off my meal. She said its a bits from steak , and because iv started eating my food, they can't refund me or replace the meal " there is nothing we can do" Weitress said.We haven't finished our mains , and left. Costumer service is awful, not helpful at all. Place is dirty, the table near us was full of plates and half eaten food all the time while we been at our table, and no one ever cared to clean it up...

Place is dirty, dirty glasses, poor Costumer service, and food doesn't taste good. It used to be a go Place for us, we never had any problems. But from today, we will never ever go...

We came out tonight for a birthday meal just my boyfriend and I, unfortunately we left disappointed with the service. We ordered nachos, full monty mixed grill, crispy chicken sandwich with a side of Mac’n’cheese, sweet potato fries and two drinks. Nachos came basically straight away but half way through we found a sticker that said “today is Thursday, use by midnight Sunday” already disgusted as today is Monday so naturally we asked for a new one, they took it away and then came back to say it was just the sticker that comes with the food which we thought is a load of rubbish. Our new nachos came out lovely nice and warm how they should be which made us grow even more concerned about the first lot we received as they were not like this. Once we finished those it was 10 minutes before our plate got taken away after staff walked past multiple times and could have easily just take it from our table. We then waited 40 minutes before asking where our food was, the girl came back and said it will be out in a minute. Another 10 minutes passes before another girl comes to our table to say they are out of sweet potato fries so clearly hadn’t started preparing our food for them to wait this long to tell us. We said we would give them another 10 minutes before we decided to get a refund and leave, when getting to the till they were already talking about our order. We said we’ve been waiting an hour and would like a refund, the guy said the food is ready to come out and has been sitting there because they didn’t know which table the order went too. I thought this was inexcusable as how did we get the nachos but they didn’t know which table to bring the rest of our order to? It personally doesn’t make sense to me, I feel lied to like they thought we were stupid. All we wanted to do was have a nice meal together for my boyfriends birthday and now our night has been nothing but disappointing. Needless to say we have gone to McDonald’s to get something because at least we won’t be waiting an...