The White House — Restaurant in Leeds

Our annual family Christmas meal takes place between Christmas and New Year, and it has become a tradition that we go to the White House.

For years the service has been excellent, but not anymore.

Just little things; like drinks getting added to our bill which we didn't order, the lack of attention when we have been for a meal, and in general, the overall quality of the experience. Christmas brought this to a head.

We booked early for 13 people, as usual, we requested the table next to the disabled entrance as one of our party is now wheelchair-bound, we paid the deposit and looked forward to our family get together.

We arrived, only to be put on a table up three steps, making it difficult for our person who uses a wheelchair. Our usual table, next to the disabled entrance was taken, the majority of the rest of the restaurant was empty, and it appeared that no one that table was disabled, which we established later.

We waited 10 minutes for someone to come and take a drinks order, 3 of our party were asked for ID, which they didn't have. I asked (as I am over 50) if I could buy them an alcoholic drink in line with the Law that allows an adult to purchase anyone over 16 an alcoholic beverage. I was told firmly, NO, I could not. It was company policy that anyone under 25 must have ID. So not a great start.

As they left the rest of us ordered drinks. Twenty minutes later, the driver re-appeared, but as our drinks had not arrived, they added theirs to the order. The original order arrived, but the second-order took another 20 minutes to arrive.

We ordered starters, noticing that the other table had yet to receive any food. We started our usual Christmas party quiz, and when an hour had gone by, and no food had arrived, we had run out of questions. But Christmas joy, after an hour an a quarter our starters appeared.

We tucked in, and as is typical for a large family, food is consumed quickly, so it didn't take us long to polish off our starters. Plus we were starving.

Nearly 40 minutes later they cleared our plates saying the main courses would be out straight away. Well, we waited, it got beyond the 2 hours mark, knowing one of our party would need more medication in an hour, so I went to the bar to enquire if there was an issue. The bar area was packed, with food coming in and out quickly, and I was told ours would be next out.

Ten minutes later the food arrived, hurray! However, some of the food was cold, well - cold on the outside warm on the inside. Some had congealed, the mash had solidified, meat was tough and inedible. All signs that the food had been stood for some time, then put into a microwave to be reheated.

Most of the food was inedible. So I found our waitress, to complain and instantly she took all the mains off our bill, which was very helpful. I asked if there was an issue and was informed that one staff member had cried off, leaving them short-staffed.

We declined replacement mains, as we didn't have time to wait another 2 hours, so I paid the remainder of the bill and left. Not impressed at all, with all of us stating next year we will go somewhere new as that was appalling.

On the day no consideration at all for the disabled. The drinks debate was simply unreasonable but if those are the establishment's rules, so be it irrespective of the Law? If they knew they had staffing issues, why didn't someone stay something - we would have understood, rather than leaving us there uncared for and unattended.

And to top it all off, think back to my earlier comments, we paid a deposit, and it was only later that night that we realised that they had not even deducted the deposit from our final bill.

So back we went the following day, and they duly paid the deposit without question straight from the till. Didn't even check our receipt just paid what we asked for!

It is such a shame having eaten there regularly over the past 14 years, 2019 will be our last year as the overall service, and quality has gone downhill faster than a...

Well it looked lovely when we walked in! Pub wasn’t very busy, we were seated in the snug area near the door, which am pleased to say they have altered so diners so get full force of the draught when door opens, we sat what seemed an age before someone came to take a drinks order( one of us ended up going to bar ourselves, when she came to take our food order beef was off, not a major problem. As a treat I chose pork it was the crackling that tempted me! Meal eventually arrived with no crackling I asked waitress if there was any she said there’s probably non left but I’ll check came back with what a form of crackling. Anyhow we got on with meal half of it was tepid half red hot and the biggest pile of stuffing on the plate I’ve ever seen would have done 4 people! The potatoes were dry and tasted like they’d been kept warm all day, veg was scrappy broccoli was in tiny bits.nobody really checked if meal was ok, as a lot of places do,they used To in the White House. (And we could have done with another round of drinks)When we had finished our meal we use have sat 25 mins waiting for table to be cleared and order a dessert, we lost the will to live and asked for the bill. They don’t take cash!!!! Paid on card instead. Sorry whitehouse not what you used to be, we didn’t get a dessert or another round as the service was terrible and slow, as an ex waitress my self half of the customers experience is...

I was rather disappointed with this place. It is a beautiful piece of architecture; a historic house of great interest that has been bastardised, sorry, I mean converted into a pub. But not that good a pub. It is part of the Chef & Brewer chain. It seems to focus on mediocrity. Why not? It's very difficult to be consistently excellent. This pub is consistently mediocre. There is a good range of beers, but they are not at their best. There's a good menu, but the food is mediocre, lukewarm and served as it becomes ready so some people in our party of five had to wait. Well, we're polite, so we all waited, with four of us looking at food going cold.

The mushroom bourgignon wellington was a bit of a disaster. It wasn't a wellington but a flat pie, with a gloopy, gelatinous gravy that had a couple of mushrooms in it. One of the vegetables was a whole carrot. It had been peeled but the ends had not been trimmed and it was boiled until it was the consistency of mashed potato. All the vegetables were rather lacking in flavour. Given that the ingredients are such a small proportion of the costs, why not get organic and fresh ingredients with a bit of flavour?

The service was peremptory and mostly miserable. Staff don't really engage with customers. I felt like I wasn't there whenever we interacted with them.

All in all, a rather miserable experience in a beautiful house....