Mulberry Tree — Restaurant in Malvern Hills

The menu, the place I cannot fault but knowledge of their industry regarding allergies is not good enough.

During these times when children are dying on aeroplanes from allergies to pumpkin seeds it is a major concern anyone dining with any dietary requirements as they don’t have complete understanding of this issue.

We passed this whilst waking and the environment was clean and friendly and needed lunch. The lunch menu stated all sandwiches available with Gluten free bread, which is a bonus.

Our order was clear, 2 x gluten free and 1 ‘normal’. We qualified the fries and again had a conversation about the gluten intolerance and the order was taken down as ‘brown’ bread. We questioned this a 3rd time and confirmed.

When something is too good to be true it usually is!! And anyone with a gluten allergy will know that the bread isn’t as good. My order came, confirmed as it looked too good, asked for the brand as well so I could find it when I got home, and I tucked it. The waiter then popped back to say it isn’t gluten free whilst 4 big bites into the sandwich. He then came back with another sandwich (non gluten this time) but at this point my body started to reject it and I was shaking uncontrollably so I refused it as I felt too sick. After a few conversations they offered to remove my food from the bill, although I hadn’t eaten it, and what I had eaten was poisoning me.

After more conversations, and a very unhappy lunch and some concern from my family, the general manager arrived. We did succeed at 50% off a total bill, still not enough in my opinion but better than the 25% offered by the duty manager.

As we eat out so often, so many restaurants take this so seriously, everything with an allergy is double checked by a manager, here there is no such checks. It’s a good job I don’t have an allergic reaction causing my throat to swell up and much more life threatening side effects otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this.

Shame, as the food they served did look good but spoilt an...

Myself and a dozen colleagues had booked a table for my farewell dinner. Despite us all having chosen our food a week previously, service was slow. I had the Thai fishcakes that were bland and had not been seasoned. A long wait then for the main course, I'd chosen the chicken and chorizo tagliatelle and wish I hadn't. The pasta was just a huge congealed mass with 5mm of oil sat in the bottom of the bowl. I left most of it, a colleague who had the same had one mouthful and left the rest. For dessert I asked for two scoops of vanilla and one scoop of chocolate ice cream, was served three vanilla, the ice cream was half melted and what was left of the scoops were sitting in an inch of melted ice cream. Yes, it was a warm evening but it must have been plated up ten minutes prior to serving.

As far as I could see, there was just one other couple dining, so why service was so slow I have no idea. The food was at best well below average and had it been just myself and my wife, I would have sent the tagliatelle back. But it was a work's dinner and so I ate what was edible and left the rest.

For the prices charged, you would expect far better than what we were served, only plus side was that our waiter was a pleasant and...

This restaurant looked promising, but sadly it was my single mostly negative restaurant experience in my four-day visit to lovely Malvern. I ordered the sirloin steak and asked the waiter to tell the chef to ensure it was prepared medium-rare, more on the rare/juicy side - I asked him to pleeeeease not bring a piece of dry, burned, leathery meat. Well, a piece of dry, charred, tasteless and unedible piece of meat is exactly what I got. What a pity to destroy an otherwise good cut like this and charge £30 for it. I did not ask for it to be changed because it pains me to waste food. And I also wanted to continue exploring the wonders of Malvern and didn't want to waste my time waiting for another piece of spoiled sirloin steak. But it was so frustrating as had taken my time to explain what I wanted to avoid. I am giving two stars and not just one because I ordered olive oil to see if I could "moisten" the ruined dry piece with something healthy and, to their credit, I did get genuine olive oil (these days most restaurants give you unhealthy seed oil such as rapeseed oil, thinking the customer won't tell the difference, but this restaurant did have the real...