Battle Deli — Restaurant in Rother

In a market as saturated as the Battle Tea Shop Racket, you could be forgiven for expecting to be at least acknowledged by the staff as you enter the cafe. Not so here, where the staff failed to miss a beat in their conversation to even look up at the apathetic groan of the door opening.

Unfortunately, this set the tone for the rest of our interaction. When I at last resorted to a pantomime clearing of my throat and ventured a "hello?" I received a sardonic "have you decided?" as an opening attempt at customer service. Bemused by the directness of the response, and caught a little flat-footed with my now-redundant, pre-prepared "fine thanks, how are you?" I could only meekly respond "oh, no not yet, sorry." This seemed to prove a suspicion to the employee, who responded with a clipped "right then," before she shuffled back to her conversation.

Having found ourselves a table, we chose a buck rarebit and the savoury crumpets. After a wait, the rarebit was good, however the crumpets were unseasoned and bland, requiring a large glass of water (requested, not offered) to unglue them from the roof of the mouth. As we ate, we observed a valiant junior staff member doing her level best to stay on top of delivering drinks and clearing tables, while our friend from before stood behind the counter on her phone.

I know that I should have raised this with the manager, and I know that a Google review is the lowest form of self-important, no-one-asked-you-anyway feedback, however I feel that if service in England is going to improve (which, Lord knows it needs to), people are going to have to start calling it out...

An absolute must visit when in Battle. Good value for money. My family (5 + one 9 month old) and I just popped into the town with our dogs and asked if dogs were welcome, they were and the staff moved the tables in the outside area to fit us all and the dogs with a water bowl. There was a good variety of food available with specials too. As we were all undecided we asked for the little ones food to come through first (jacket and cheese) which arrived very quickly and had mound of cheese which for an adult probably would have been too much but we just took some off and it was perfect for little one. We all decided we wanted the ploughman's which came with a choice of cheese but as cheese lovers we wanted it all so asked if that was possible whci it was so everyone was extremely pleased and in the end only cost £1.50 for the extra cheese which we were pleased with. Our lunches arrived and wow the best ploughmans we had all seen for a while. Although the bloomer bread was not available (which we were told) the was 2 slices of granary bread, a decent sized salad, a good amount of ham, an eye watering pickled onion (that's good) and the cheeses. I think only one of us managed to eat it all. The staff were very friendly and accommodating and all in all a very good...

Staff plain ignored me after my first order. breakfast was a little on the small side so wanted to order more. 15-20 mins to finally get my table cleared and place an second order. received my drinks and then waited a further 35-40 mins wait before i found out my order had been forgotten/lost? After having to stop a waiter mid service to some one else to find out, further 10 minute wait for just two crumpets ( like 2 mins in a toaster). Went to pay, my first ticket had been lost had to tell them what i ordered so they did not ridiculously under charge me. Overheard other people complaining about bad service. Was not overly busy considering. Took over an hour to get a full English breakfast with two crumpets and two teas basically. Food was standard nothing worth noting, Garlic mushrooms in breakfast little unusual. wont be coming back.

(update - After reading other people's recent reviews about having bad service, and long wait times like mine, i felt at the time of my review that one star was very harsh and gave two stars in honest opinion it probably should have been one, ive yet to visit a cafe, and have service as bad as...