Fables Coffee House — Restaurant in Newark and Sherwood

Arrived for 10:15, with my daughter, just me and her for something special. Fables had a great word of mouth reputation so I thought we’d give it a bash. Got sat with a couple who clearly didn’t want company, and proceeded to make the experience a slog. Their order was took, and we were left to wait another five minutes before ours was taken. By 10:35 their food arrived, it took another five minutes before our drink materialised, no food at all. The couple ate their meal, drank up and got up to pay. This is now 11:05. Still no food. The final straw was when staff sat a group of four at the table with their two dogs, no asking if we were ok, no update on the order, and no checking if we were ok with animals at the shared table. At 11:15 I went to waitress at the door, informed her I would pay for the one drink we had had, and were going. She proceeded to tell me the food was ready. It was no good, I had an appointment to keep, I now didn’t have the time to sit and eat and make it. She would box it to go she said. Why, would I want to cart a hot meal, to Retford, have an appointment for an unspecified amount of time, and then want to sit and eat lukewarm or cold food from a box when I should be enjoying fresh in a nice setting as I would have paid for? I said no thank you I’ll pay for the drink. This clearly annoyed her and she told me “you should have said something” she then told her colleague to throw the food away and made a big show of voiding off the other items. It’s sad that this was partly spoiled by other customers, and a lack of attention, I would have loved to have tried the food as it did look good, but this has put such a negative experience on this cafe I can’t say I’d want to return, please take this as feedback that can be worked on to help grow your staff and avoid these situations for...

Firstly ill give the positives only to be let down by the negatives. The cafe is lovely and what we saw of the food that people were getting it looked really nice although its not cheap (nearly £10 for a full english) but they do a lot of lovely looking breakfast stuff.

Now out experience unfortunately wasn't as good as we hoped. Our server was a young black lass who didn't seem overly helpful or attentive but anyway we ordered a full English breakfast with scrambled eggs and a sausage/bacon with poached egg on sourdough with a coffee and a coke. The coffees took 30 minutes (yes 30 minutes) to arrive which was luke warm although did taste beautiful, the food came out 15 minutes after that so in total we waited 45 minutes from sitting down, we were fine with that until our order came out which was WRONG!! They brought out two sausage, bacon and poached egg rolls instead of one roll and one full english. The waitress then took the items away and replaced them 5 minutes later with the correct order, this is where the problem starts. The creamy scrambled eggs we saw on other diners breakfast can only be described as a very dry excuse on our breakfast and the runny poached egg we saw, well it was like a hard boiled egg when I cut into it. We immediately went to the counter to leave and the manageress (or owner) was lovely and even she was disgusted so she gave us our drinks for free and we decided to go to another cafe instead for food. The cafe is lovely just let down by incompetent young weekend staff who seemed slow and not attentive to customers. Also the chef shouldn't have given the waitress them dried up breakfasts which has clearly been left under a hot...

We called in today for an afternoon snack. We both ordered the steak sandwich, this came with a small pot of coleslaw which was very nice. When the steak sandwich arrived the steak was served rare. My partner asked if this could be returned and cooked to medium as the meat was really red and not to her liking and would not be able to eat it. The waitress said that this could not be done as food is pre done!!!!!! The menu did not say that the steak comes rare only and surely if they cook things in the kitchen this could have been rectified quite easily. She re ordered a ham cob instead, which was nice but for £9 I think is quite expensive. I didn't mind the steak being rare however it was as tough as old boot leather. We will not be in a rush to return!!!!

With regard to your comments the ham cob was served just as a ham cob..........no pork pie, no wedges or onion rings, no salad or apple chutney. I paid £9 for a ham cob with a small pot of coleslaw. The steak would also have been to my liking should I have been able to chew it. Updating the menu would be a good idea as anywhere serving steak always asks how the customer would...