Bluebell Inn — Restaurant in Malvern Hills

The Bluebell Inn. What a pleasant surprise. After many years I have returned to the area and have been dismayed in the way Malvern has changed and not for the better.

However,The Bluebell Inn has been transformed to how I remember it. As you walk in everything is fresh, clean and airy. Staff are welcoming and friendly.

To drink I was presented with the chance to try a tipple of the three most popular ales before making a choice. My choice of “Old Thumper” ale was followed by a pint of “Banks Amber”. After supping these tasty pints I felt I should eat something, and wow was I in for a treat. As I was eating a large meal later that night, I chose a light lunch comprising of Hunters chicken in lovely slices of toasted homemade bread and a portion of chips.

What a delight this was. If the standard was that good on something fairly simple, then what can I expect on my return indulging in a steak or one of the other mouth-watering main courses they offer.

The Bluebell Inn has nice touches whilst I was there a woman taking her elderly Father out was made to feel very welcome and couple with a delightful what looked like a small husky, had obviously been there before again were welcomed like old friends.

Another nice touch is those who are slightly infirm on their feet, can entrance via the back door where there are no steps and wide doors. The other thing is you can park right by the door what a great idea.

Overall, The Bluebell Inn is welcoming, has an excellent choice of drinks, the food is superb and presentation was excellent. They manage to cater for all ages.

I recommend them fully. As I said at the beginning of this review, I was pleasantly surprised and as the famous line in the Terminator says" I'll be back" lol.

30/5/2024- You know when you have been somewhere sometime ago and you return, you wonder whether it will be the same, well rest assured it was better.

I returned with my aged 94 year old Father today and it was nice because I was able to park around the back and he could get to the table on level ground. I had pre-booked the table and we were able to get table 16 which in my view is the best all rounder.

We were made to feel very welcome and the food and service was outstanding. I ordered the Hunters Chicken which is a favourite but my Father had the Lamb Koftas. After tasting these I wish I had them even though the Hunters Chicken was delicious. The Koftas were superb in flavour with just the right amount of spice and to be honest the portion could easily have been a mains course

Anyway, I digress, the Bluebell Inn, Malvern is still an...

Table booked for 7:15pm (and it stated we had a 2hr slot), arrived 7.05pm but seated straight away, with a warm welcome from front of house manager. Our waitress took the drinks order, then returned to say one of the ingredients for a mocktail was unavailable, disappointing. Drinks were reasonably quick to arrive. The same waitress took our food order (she was a bit mumbly and not particularly enthusiastic). When asked about the bruschetta she confirmed it was bread with pesto, tomato and cheese on, this we ordered along with 2 other starters, and 3 mains. The bruschetta, when the starters eventually arrived over 30 minutes later, was covered in all sorts including raw onion. Unfortunately as this was not what was expected (based on previous experience), the top was scrapped off so that the cheese, tomato and pesto could be put back on. The other starters were okay, although I thought at £7.50, 3 small mushroom aranchi was skimpy. We then waited a long time before the plates were cleared and our mains arrived. My lasagne had clearly sat under the salamander for far too long as it was absolutely boiling and burnt round the edges, the 'homemade garlic bread' turned out to be an undercooked ciabatta roll, sliced into criss crosses with garlic oil painted over the top, it wasn't good and after trying it I left it. Again plenty of raw onion in evidence in the side salads of which again, there had been no mention on the menu, not everyone likes raw onion! We had already been there well over our allocated 2 hours when we were halfway through the mains. Having finished, we had another long wait with the dirty dishes (which we'd stacked) in front of us before giving up hope that our waitress would notice and having to stand up and catch her attention, in order to ask for pudding menus. Having ordered, there was another long wait for what is generally the quickest part of a menu to arrive. The puddings were good, and probably the best bit of our meal, which is not great really. We again had to catch the waitress's attention to ask to settle our bill, and settled up without leaving a tip. The food was in the most part okay, the service (apart from initial seating), was very slow and not great. Yes, it was fairly busy but no warning was given about the long waits, and there definitely seemed to be no rush, so we can only presume this is now usual. We have eaten at The Bluebell previously and had better experiences, although we've not been in the past 6 months. We left around 10:30pm, nearly 3 1/2 hours after we'd arrived and feeling full but not...

Servers were helpful at trying to offer solutions for my Husband for the 2 course lunch menu offer when they did not have the cut of meat he ordered which was the only thing he could have from the lunchtime offer menu that we were choosing from due to being gluten free. The server went to speak with the manager to see what they could sort out and the manager was very abrupt and said they could not allow him to have anything off of the main menu as part of the lunchtime offer even if we were to pay slightly more as they cannot put it through the tills due to the ways the tills work. We were not told before we were given the menus and had chosen our meals that the steak was not available so he had chosen that because it is what he wanted along with the soup starter. He ended up with a bowl of chips because the other gf options weren’t what he had chosen or what he wanted to eat.

The decor is lovely and the meals we did have were good quality but the service in providing options for someone to be able to choose from the lunchtime menu we wanted to order from who is gluten intolerant were limited to just the steak which wasn’t available and the manager was not going to offer any solutions to enable my husband to have the steak he wanted. There were so many ways around this it’s unreal.

Edit: we were happy to pay the difference for the price in the steak if my husband could then have still had the two course meal but you said no because you couldn’t put that through the till due to how your tills work which is absolute nonsense all of us at that table have worked in this industry and are very aware that a manager/owner can override the tills and input things differently - you could have sorted this out and you didn’t want to.

The gf menu was limited and hardly anything on it that was suitable for my husband I think he knows what he likes and doesn’t like.

You could have worked around it and you chose to just say it couldn’t be done and not even offer him a way to be able to have the steak 🥩 he wanted.

Do not deflect and try and make it look like you did everything you could because you did not. There were so many ways you could have worked around this and worked out a solution for us but you didn’t even ask if we were willing to pay the price for the bigger steak and then you would still provide the soup and gf bread as a gesture of goodwill - you just said you couldn’t (wouldn’t) over ride the till system.

Poor customer...