Garden Restaurant — Restaurant in Northern Ireland

We were booked for afternoon tea at 3pm.on Sunday 06.07.25. The waiter was very friendly and professional, that is where the good experience ended. We booked 2 weeks in advance and checked ability to provide gluten and dairy free alternatives

It took 45 minutes for our afternoon tea to arrive, 20 minutes after our tea had been served, which was cold by that point. We were told it takes 45 minutes to make a tray of sandwiches and heat some soup also the chef was busy with carvery. If your chef/kitchen can't cope with multiple bookings don't take the booking to begin with.

The gluten free bread was awful - do the chef's taste the food before putting it on the menu. The salmon sandwiches were replaced by egg sandwiches for no discernable reason, as salmon neither contains gluten or dairy.

I was given a large bowl of tasteless vegetable soup to compensate for the chef being unable to make a gluten and dairy free scone.

For the desserts we were given two macaroons (not macrons) and 4 pieces of fruit on a small skewer. I have tastier things in my cupboard at home. The meringue nest had cream with no sugar in it, which was also then tasteless, adding insult to injury. We have had many afternoon teas over the years with our dietary requirements and have been treated to substitute versions of what everyone else would ordinarily recieve. This shambles made us feel we weren't as worthy as other diners who don't have dietary dietary requirements. If any other diner had been given this as an afternoon tea it's doubtful they would have paid for any of it. Given we had to get food afterwards as we atte so little of what was presented to us. Please do better in future.

We were also seated in the reception area which didn't feel very welcoming. With guests coming in and out of...

Things that were good – prior to our afternoon tea I had emailed to request some plain ham sandwiches for my picky daughter. The email was answered promptly and when we arrived and looking at the menu it was clear that my request had been met which was brilliant. The customer service from beginning to end was 2nd to none. All of the staff were polite, attentive and friendly. We enjoyed where we were sitting at the window. The atmosphere was really nice with the festive decorations. The scones were lovely and warm, but they were somewhat dry. But we got extra butter and cream so they were lovely. There was a nice variety offered of both Savoury and sweet. There was a real Wow factor when the food was brought out on the stands. Things that could be improved – the sandwiches appeared to have been sitting around for quite some time and the bread was dry. Some of my family’s sandwiches seemed to be nicer than others! For example, for the festive sandwiches, my husband’s didn’t have any cranberry sauce. The festive trifle did not have much flavour and could’ve done with some sponge to make it more like a trifle. To be honest, for the price, the food was a wee bit disappointing. It looked good, but wasn’t particularly flavourful/special. Would I recommend it? Probably, but I would advise friends to go earlier in the day so the sandwiches would be fresher. Overall - thanks for a lovely afternoon. My daughters had never had afternoon tea before and they really...

We stopped at the Ballygally Castle hotel for 5 nights as a special occasion to celebrate my retirement and ate in the restaurant 4 nights and had an afternoon tea. The first night we were sat down at our table for 25 minutes before someone came and took our order , nobody came and asked if we wanted a drink whilst we looked at the menu . The food when it came was nicely cooked but I had steak and chips and it came with no garnish , no mushrooms and when I asked for mustard , they came back and said they had none. The next night we had a table booked for 7.45 . We went to the restaurant and despite having booked the table three weeks earlier were told to go and sit outside the restaurant and they would call us in when ready . Eventually about an hour later they came out and told us we could not have a table in the restaurant. By then there were about six groups of people in the same boat , the worst having waited from 7.15. Eventually at approximately 9pm we gave them an order for a beef daub and they came out with sirloin steak ! When challenged the waiter didnt know the difference but we were told they had no beef daub left on the menu. But surely when the chef had seen the order he would have known the difference. And so it went on , very little supervision from their management on what were new young waiters that needed support that was...