Ego At The Cedar Tree, Nuneaton — Restaurant in Nuneaton and Bedworth

I received a birthday email, offering me a free meal to celebrate. We decided to visit on Sunday 27th October, a couple of days after my birthday. On checking the website, we could see availability every 15 minutes throughout the afternoon so decided to drive over as walk ins. When we (table of 2) advised we didn't have a booking, the guy on the front desk advised us he was very busy. He advised us that we would need to turn the table around pretty fast. He repeated he was busy and we would need to leave by 14:30. Not a problem for us as it was 12:30, but the greeting was not what we expected. I told him that I had a birthday voucher, as the email advised to do so. This received no reaction. The guy grabbed 2 menus and ushered us to follow him to a table. We were not asked about menu or dietary requirements. We were not advised on any offers or deals or restrictions regarding the voucher we had. The bar tender placed a jug of water on our table as soon as we sat down. I again advised that we had the birthday voucher and enquired about how to use it. He went away and spoke to the guy that would serve us. The bar tender confirmed we couldn't have the Sunday lunch on offer and needed to order from the a la carte menu. I checked the menu and couldn't see any allergy advice on the main menu, so made my way to the bar for a NGCI menu as gluten makes me ill. We both ordered from the NGCI menu, so I can share my wife's food (she is not gf) the guy that the bar tender checked our birthday voucher restrictions with, came over and took our drink order. Then he took our food order. A different guy served our food. No reference to allergy requirements was made up to this point. We ate and our plates were cleared by a lady, training another lady. She asked if we wanted dessert, we said yes and my wife confirmed the need for a NGCI menu for me. We ordered dessert with the food server and as he was prepping to bring it over, came to check the order as my wife's order was gluten containing. At this point I confirmed this was correct, as I was the only one with the allergy issue and the starter and main were ordered that way in order to share food. Once we finished our dessert, I asked for the bill from the lady who cleared our main plates but our dessert plates were not cleared at this point. It took 20 minutes for our plates to be cleared by our food server. Still no bill. Once the bill was presented, no birthday discount was showing, so I showed the voucher again. The lady seemed a little bemused by this, took the voucher code and went back to the till. She presented a new bill and advised how much had been taken off with the voucher. We paid and left. We interacted with 5 members of staff (not including the trainee) 4 of which were aware of our voucher. At no point was my birthday referenced. This was our 6th visit to Ego, 5th to this venue. We are unlikely to visit again due to the poor customer...

Unfortunately wasn’t the best experience, considering the cost. The concept is lovely, the menu looks great and some of the food was really nice, but a lot of it wasn’t, or was underwhelming for the cost and the wait.

Appreciate that Saturday lunch times can be very busy and a really lovely waitress did explain to us towards the end that there was so much afternoon tea that the restaurant was a bit backlogged, as with it being Mother’s Day weekend which is totally understandable. But no body explained this delay to us until chatting to this waitress about puddings at the end.

The guys serving us were so busy that they didn’t check in with us even after waiting for starters for over an hour. All of the courses took a long time to come out, as did drinks etc which is fine but was annoying without an explanation as we spent half the meal thinking they’d forgotten about our order rather than just chilling and chatting.

Some of the food was very overpriced, for example the £9 puddings where some were huge Sundays and others tiny slices of a cake, still for £9. The drinks were £5 for a Pepsi max, I might be out of touch with the price there but felt very steep - and a gin was the same price. The sharing starter was £18 and was not enough for sharing, and had some very small and basic foods on there for such a cost. Even the £25 hanging kebab which looked impressive, had hardly any meat on it so was very expensive for a lot of grilled veg.

It was just quite underwhelming for how nice the menu and restaurant looked. Pricing just seemed random. Better communication about the wait would have been great, and the server calling my 50 year old mum ‘mate’ every time was a bit odd😂. But some nice food if you order the right things and go when a bit quieter. Thank you to our server and the waitress who sorted our puddings who were both very helpful.

I think it could be a lovely day out, perhaps we just hit at...

Very good food and service with a great Monday evening price.

So on a Monday this establishment does two courses for £15.95 - even though some of the mains cost more than this total already!

We went for the goats cheese and cranberry relish, calamari and the garlic mushrooms for starters.

Although the goats cheese was good, the picture shows the bread choice wasn’t great l, looking like a piece of sliced bread! The mushrooms went back as they were too on sliced bread and were meant to be with garlic, lemon, thyme and olive oil - but were with none of this. They apologised and offered to swap it. This was replaced with breaded Camembert which was much better.

The calamari was nice and thin - not chewy - and the batter was very light , nearly a tempura.

For the main, two of us opted for the lamb rump with potato dauphinoise. The other for a ribeye steak (£3.50 supplement). As per the picture, the lamb was beautifully cooked. Slightly pink (as advertised) and a tasty outer where the fat had been crisped up. The rosemary/red currant sauce worked so well with it. Dauphinoise was very tasty and better that it was served separately so it didn’t mix into the sauce.

The ribeye steak taste was amazing. Cut and finish was excellent. Cooked as requested. Steak was meaty flavour but light texture.

On top of this, bottles of house wine could be added to the order for £5 which was very reasonable. Opted for the white house wine which was slightly bland but not bad for the money.

On the whole, a very good meal, excellent service, very nice decor (you wouldn’t think you were in Nuneaton!!) and food was well worth the money.

Thank you Ego for a...