Starting Gate — Restaurant in Nottingham

We visited lunchtime on Wednesday 23 May, after visiting Colwick Country Park right nearby and having looked on Google for somewhere to go for lunch. We were greeted by the young lady as soon as we entered, her name was something like "Jordy", short for "Jordane", she was very welcoming and very busy looking after the front of house on her own, but it was a weekday lunchtime, so not really busy. We ordered some drinks, then sat down to work out what we would like to eat and ordered our food which came in a reasonable time. My mum had Cod & Chips, she is very fussy about her cod, but she really enjoyed it, the batter was light & crispy. My brother had Chicken Tikka Masala, there was plenty of it and it came with 2 large poppadoms. I had steak and chips, the first thing I often try is the peas, as past experience elsewhere, has found them to be cold, but they where hot. My only niggle was the steak, I asked for medium, it was okay, but one side was well done whilst the other side nearer to rare, but the steak itself was nice so I was not worried about it. Afterwards I sat and read some of the reviews, one mentioned dogs and there was one in the pub, but it was not in the food area and was well behaved, my thought was, well it is right next to the park where people will walk dogs, so you would expect some. Overall, next time we are in the area, we will certainly...

Went for a quick lunch with my daughter. We ordered food and drink via the app. A disheveled waitress appeared with our drinks - told us she had a hangover and couldn’t be bothered to put them on trays! I asked if we could have glasses and she said if we wanted glasses with our drinks we should have requested glasses on the app?? Strange - I thought this was a pub?? She then reappeared with 2 straws clutched in her dirty hands (great in COVID times) and put them straight in our drinks!! Yuk!! We drank straight from the bottles after discarding the straws. Our food took ages and when I went in to enquire they had no record of our order (despite the aforementioned drinks being on the same order). They re-took the order and delivered. I also requested complimentary drinks because of the wait. The drinks arrived with glasses and ice - and the waitress (a new one, very pleasant called Louise) said she had paid for them herself. This is not what I expected and told her it is the company that should be rectifying the error, not her. She said she should be able to claim it back. I certainly hope so, and I hope that the pub gives her a pay rise for diffusing a very difficult situation. She is management material. As for the waitress with the hangover - just sack her and save the pubs reputation! Probably...

We visited at lunchtime on a Friday and found a table. The menus were not very clean and cutlery was missing from some tables. We retrieved cutlery from an empty table and ordered via the app, which was confusing, had kids drinks missing and different labels to the menu.

Staff were very friendly, and drinks were brought quickly after ordering, but cleanliness was not the best: a member of staff put a. “Reserved” notice on the table next to ours without noticing that the table was dirty and had debris on it.

Food was served soon after and staff were again friendly and attentive. The food, however, was hit and miss.

The onion rings were nicely cooked, as were the sausages, the Mac and Cheese was very nice too.

The steak was a bit iffy though and didn’t taste great, though it was cooked through precisely as ordered. I guess you can’t blame the chef for the cut of meat.

The sizzler platter wasn’t very hot though, and no real sizzling was going on: mostly because of the huge mass of onions underneath the food. Too many to cook properly, they just cooled the sizzler down and sat there pooling in oil.

All in all, not inedible but needs a little...