The Cross Keys — Restaurant in Lancaster

What can I say.... it has all the components of a fab eating house without the attention to detail. The food just didn’t hold up to the price. My family and I ate there today (Sunday). We had a mixture of dishes including fish and chips, roast beef, roast Gammon, and steak. The beef was fine and the gammon beautiful however the roast potatoes were cooked so much there was no potato left in them, the Yorkshire puddings were so hard when trying to cut into it a few of us knocked half the veg off our plates all over the table, they had to be eaten like a crisp, and it sounded like a crisp too...I couldn’t eat mine. Don’t bother with the crackling as it was like eating a salty twig and barley chewable. My husband had a steak with a huge fatty vein running through it which he had difficulty eating around and it was very very very well done and not what he asked for. The veg was dry.... not sure how that was achieved!! The fish was made to look huge but it turned out it was mostly batter, some people might like that. The service was a tad slow but we enjoyed the time we had to enjoy our meals and chat. The desserts were fine too. The lead waitress was lovely however very overworked. She spent most of her time chasing up the other staff who have a few training needs. The young girl collecting our plates didn’t ask how our meals were so I made sure I told her about my issues. She went to tell the chef and that’s the last we heard about it. She even forgot to clear half the plates or she was avoiding us not sure which but she had no reason to avoid us as I was very nice about the issues. The most concerning thing was that we noticed the lead waitress was unable to use her arm. We asked her about it and she mentioned she had slipped in the kitchen. She couldn’t ball her fingers up and I asked if I could look at her arm. There was a huge bruise going up her arm and her wrist looked a little out of shape. She clearly needed to go to A& E however said she couldn’t because it was too busy and the staff would not cope. It was 4pm and her shift did not finish until 7pm. I feel so so sorry for her as she was lovely and clearly in pain and I am hoping that she was able to find a way to get away early and get treatment for her arm. Perhaps spending time teaching the staff the basics would have made all the difference. I don’t think i will be in a hurry to go back. There are other pubs in the area that offer everything they do with better trained staff and better quality food. Maybe the chef was having a bad day or maybe they were short staffed however as we didn’t receive any feedback from the complaint we are unable to give them the...

Very disappointing. My husband and I wanted a special Sunday lunch and booked The Cross Keys because our last meal there was fantastic. We were really looking forward to it but were sadly disappointed. The waitress did not write down our order. This is always a worry as things can be easily forgotten. For example, having ordered 2 Cabernet Sauvignon we were given 2 Sauvignon blanc. The bar waiter was very apologetic and sorted it out straight away. The 7 hour rib of beef I requested wasn’t available (table was for 1.15 so either they ran out quickly or else it was listed on the menu when it shouldn’t have been. Certainly nobody had told us this before we were given the menus.) Instead I ordered seasonal special chicken, my husband the trio of roast. Long wait for the food (people who arrived after us were served before us). The food was brought by a different waitress who was not aware I’d also ordered a side of cauliflower cheese (2nd item forgotten by order-taking waitress). The food? My chicken did not have a flavour of sticky honey and thyme as menu suggested. Veg were presented in a very small stack, and hidden at the bottom were a few tiny roast potatoes, all burnt yet strangely soggy. The cauliflower was barely cooked and the meagre cheese sauce was thin. My husband’s trio roast was terrible. The beef was so tough it was inedible (we took it home for the dog). Also the vegetables were dry and shrivelled. The gravy had already dried up on the plate and we had to ask for extra. Both meals were only just warm. We suspect they had been reheated for whatever reason, but had definitely been sitting for a while, cooling down, before being served. Nobody asked how our food was until my husband went to pay the bill, and when he said the food wasn’t very good the waitress, who was very pleasant, apologised but didn’t know how to deal with it.

You may ask why we didn’t send the food back. Simple. There were very few staff around, we had already waited a long time, we were very hungry and we are not natural complainers. On this occasion however we felt that a full review was in order.

We have left generous tips on previous visits but left nothing this time. Sadly there was a distinct lack of care and attention and the food was poor . We will watch out for more positive reviews for the Cross Keys but will not be coming again...

We ate here on Sunday 13th Feb as a family 6. On arrival the venue and decor is really nice and very welcoming. Onto the service and food, once we were seated at our table in the restaurant area we had to ask a waitress to take our drinks order which she replied 'I'll be over in a minute' the waitress then proceded to come back and forth into the seating area taking orders but had forgotten to take ours. We then asked again and she apologised for forgetting and said someone would be over, nobody came over. It wasn't until we asked a third time that our drinks order got taken after around 10-15 minutes of being seated. Onto the food order, we all ordered a Sunday roast and 2x kids meals. Firstly the wait of around 40 minutes was a very long time, we wouldn't of minded if we had being made aware of the long wait as with children we would not of waited this long. When the food arrived the waiter firstly brought the wrong orders out of 2 dishes we didn't order and then went back to the kitchen to check and came back out with the items and said we had ordered them which we had not. All of the food came out apart from 1 kids meal which was 6 minutes later than all the other meals. One of the Sunday roasts was served with cold meat, I'm not talking room temperature it was cold. The waiter then took it back and gave a fresh plate with warm meats, and by this time the kids order still hadn't arrived. We ordered sides of pigs in blankets which were served as undercooked bacon and pale sausages, none of us touched them, I wish we had photos to show. All the meals said on the menu they were served with a sauce, none were and we had to ask for sauces of apple sauce, cranberry. The meals were well presented, however the service and food was not up to standard at all. Will not be returning after only going due to it being...