The Morning Star — Restaurant in Oldham

The food at the Morning Star is generally pretty good. But I cannot recommend visiting this restaurant because the service has absolutely taken a nose dive. After sitting down and not being served or even acknowledged, we walked out after 20 minutes. The pub wasn’t particularly busy and were visible walking in and sitting down. There were staff about but no one took responsibility to serve us.

This follows from my previous visit where we arrived nearly an hour before the prescribed closing time for the restaurant and were told we couldn’t be accommodated and we weren’t really given an explanation why, but I got the impression the staff couldn’t just be bothered because it was 19:15 on a Sunday evening and they were probably looking to clocking off after 8pm

It’s just continued bad customer experience and when it becomes a pattern; that’s never accidental.

EDIT - Regarding the reply from The Morning Star. I can assure you we were not informed that we had to approach the bar for food, in fact we had no verbal communication to or from the waitress, zero. Had this been the case we would obviously have approached the bar for service.

Furthermore, the waitress did begin to the clear the table as we were taking our seats, which is why we assumed she knew we were waiting for service, but she only partially cleared the table and we were expecting her return to clear the remaining plates and dishes, which didn’t happen, which was another reason we decided to leave because the table wasn’t fully cleared despite the waitress seeing us take our seats. We were assuming once the waitress had returned to clear the rest of table we would be offered service, which doesn’t seem an unreasonable assumption.

I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt to The Morning Star’s reply that they are perhaps confusing us with other customers who must have a had a similar experience, and in fact aren’t just trying to fabricate a response to my review to deflect from genuine criticisms of a poor...

What a great find! I'd been to the Morning Star many years ago, and all I can remember is that it can't have been that good, as we never returned.

However, this is now certainly a place we'll be back to.

On arrival, we were impressed at the decor of the pub - it's been done up at some point to a high standard and feels like a place you'd be happy to spend time (and money!)

Having said that, I was a little disappointed at first, as we were handed a 'Sunday menu' which was very much a significantly cut down version of their regular menu.

Much of what I'd planned I was going to have beforehand was now no longer an option. I would certainly suggest that this is made clear on the website, as this is not stated anywhere that I can find. I've included a photo of the abridged menu for others considering a Sunday visit.

Our minds now focussed by the narrower band of options, we were still each able to find something we'd like. Between the four of us, we had the 8oz rump steak, cheese and onion pie, and the salt and pepper chicken burger.

It was, to a plate, magnificent. My son declared it the "best steak he'd ever had" and that he was pleased that we now didn't have to travel to Manchester for a decent steak.

That might be the overenthusiam of a 10 year old, but the food was nonetheless very, very good! Every element of the meal was cooked perfectly, the portions were ample, and the prices more than reasonable.

I did have a pang of buyers remorse, however, as I saw the superbly presented Sunday dinners (Yorkshire pudding sat proudly atop a pile of piping hot meat and veg) being brought out to other tables. This passed momentarily as I tucked into my (also impressive) salt and pepper chicken burger, but it was a regret that returned and shall spur me on to come back and give that a try too.

But not before I've been able to come back and give the rest of their full...

We’ve been here twice now and both times it’s been excellent for food. First time I had the Moroccan Lamb Salad which was the best thing I’ve ever tasted (why oh why did you remove it from the menu 😭 because I am obsessed) and the second time I had the Star Burger. Everyone’s food came out piping hot and every plate cleared. We went with a variety of kids both times and the kids choices were varied enough that everyone had something they loved. We do have some very particular members of our party and some fussy kids but there were no complaints whatsoever! First time we were a large-ish party of 9 and second time we were a party of 5 but no difference in service or quality of the food. Menu options are really quite wide so there is something for everyone though admittedly there are no veggies or vegans in our parties so I didn’t pay close attention to those options. Atmosphere is great and they have the big TV for sports. Additionally an outside area for the summer and a good sized car park. We will definitely be visiting again. Thanks so much for 2 fantastic...