Alders — Restaurant in Newark and Sherwood

We booked a table in advance and although we arrived 10 minutes early, we were taken to our table by a welcoming member of staff who had advised us there were no grills available. This didn't matter on this occasion as one of us wanted a salad and the other, a carvery. The food and drinks we ordered were as requested though my husband had only wanted one pig-in-blanket and ended up receiving and paying for three. Only having a small appetite, he only wanted a small carvery meal but the person serving was so hassled by the busyness of the evening that he gave my husband a large plate and despite my husband's pointing out that he only wanted a small meal, the server just ignored that! (We don't like wasting food so my husband did eat it all but he would have preferred not to have had such a big plate of food!) The food was nicely cooked and the music playing wasn't too loud, which we were pleased about. The place was super busy with queues. We had quite a long wait for our desserts to arrive as it was a busy Friday evening. The sherry trifle cheesecake was unusual in having a custard flavour but to say it was served with cold custard was an exaggeration as there were one or two swirls of custard on the plate more as a decoration than as an accompaniment. I couldn't taste the sherry but it didn't matter as I had had a sherry to drink! My husband was looking forward to the blood orange fondant in the chocolate brownie but he said it didn't seem like fondant, just chocolate sauce, and there was very little orange flavour! The portions of both dessert were quite small too! That said, it was a nice evening out, having a meal which we didn't have to prepare ourselves and to cap it all, Alders gave us 30% off the price of the main courses!...

I've been coming to The Alders for over ten years. I've seen it's up and it's downs and still every so often go back and give them another chance. Today, was one of them days, considering we had 30% off posted through our door for the new menu they were offering.

Everything was fine, despite the fact that it was obvious that the prices had shot up tremendously. I gave them the benefit of the doubt, thinking that maybe the quality had improved too. I was wrong.

My daughters meal from the menu cost £5.29 and consisted of two fish fingers, two mini potato waffles and a small bowl of backed beans. She obviously left hungry. My partners burger and my burger cost over £19 and was bog-standard to say the least. The nicest part of the meal was the chips they used.

Along with our meal, we had to endure random banging noises coming from what sounded like upstairs which startled me every time it happened due to have sensory issues because of my autism/adhd. I came here for a relaxing time, not to endure whatever that was. I could have stayed home and listened to the construction works outside my back garden if I wanted that. We had no check-back either, which I assume is a new thing considering everything else has gone down hill and half-arsed. My partner also hurt his tooth on a foreign object in his meal, to which he took it to a member of staff who said they would speak to someone in the kitchen about it, but never came back. We know the feeling though, we won't be coming back either 😬

How can they justify the prices when the quality is that bad? A coffee shop in Creswell does better burgers and they're less than half the price and double the quality! Madness!

All in all, £39.80 WITH 30% off and I'm still in shock with...

Ordering app didn't work Not enough readily available information about artificial colourants Food took way too long to arrive.

I recognise that it was a busy Sunday and we were a large party (12), but we arrived at 1:30, I took everybodys orders on the app on my phone, but it didn't accept my payment. Twice. So I went to see the manager, he was very helpful but told me I'd have to place the order at the till, which he got me in to do quickly. But it was 30 minutes after I first tried to place the order. And there were items missing so I had to return. Plus because the 20% off drinks offer was only available on the app, I didn't get the offer. My son has intolerances to colour additives. The website (via the app) was unclear and unfinished on the matter, and so my son asked the manager, who was very helpful and got information from the kitchen, but it took 15 minutes, all the while my son was stood at the service desk rather than be with us. So after eventually getting the order placed at 2:30, and bearing in mind 8 of those were carvery orders, the 4 non-carvery orders took 1 hour and 20 minutes to arrive. Some of the carvery guests in our party couldn't wait any longer, so we all ended up eating at different times. The food was tasty and hot however, so that was good. The service was generally good (although we felt the carvery server at the time we were served didn't want to be there). It just felt like there were way to few staff to process and serve on a busy day.

A shame as we like...