Mackintosh at the Willow — Restaurant in Scotland

This review covers the afternoon tea offering.

Let's start with the good: Service was warm and friendly. The selection of teas were superb, it would take several visits to cover a fraction of the teas available. The sweet offerings of the afternoon tea were very nice with careful balanced flavours. The presentation was a traditional afternoon tea offering.

And so to the not so good and the reason for the average review. I had a gift voucher and booking was not straightforward - what was on the gift voucher didn't match the website..I had to call and check I'd got the right thing. The gift voucher code was almost illegible.

The savoury selection for the vegetarian tea was incredibly disappointing. The bread was slightly stale, as if it'd been out for a while. It was also cheap supermarket bread. For an establishment like this, I do expect a higher quality of bread such as in house baked goods or sourced from a local supplier. Another afternoon tea that you can have not too far away has freshly baked focaccia as one of the sandwich offerings. What I got felt like it'd been picked up from the Tesco across the road last night with a yellow sticker, and had the crusts cut off.

There was more pickle than cheese in that sandwich, a huge slab of red pepper and next to no hummus in the stale white bread sandwich, and the chickpea wrap was quite frankly inedible - there was more wrap than filling and the chickpeas were dried out. I could've mentioned this when staff took away the plate but to be honest it wasn't worth making a fuss over and drawing attention to our table.

For what is now a National Trust property, the scones were also very disappointing.

We allegedly had "champagne" with our afternoon tea, but what we got was a sweet fizz that the server called prosecco at one point. As we didn't see a bottle it could well have been that. It didn't taste like a "good" champagne at all.

I caveat these points with the fact that this is the second time we've been, and it's certainly gone downhill since the last visit several years ago. One may dare to say it's trading on the name alone and should do better.

I feel sorry for the people who gifted me the voucher. I know it wasn't cheap, but I also know you can get much better value for money elsewhere.

I can't say...

My partner and I visited on a Saturday to see the exhibition then have afternoon tea in the Salon de Luxe, then on the Sunday for the tour.

Initial enquiries before arriving were all replied to quickly and the helpful, friendly manner really gave a great first impression. We were greeted by Heather on arriving in the shop and she gave us a quick rundown of the experience. We had given ourselves half an hour to see the exhibition and this was ideal. It was extremely well done and we particularly liked seeing the cross section of the chair and the construction process. Before entering the Salon du Luxe, you see the original doors - so beautiful!

We were seated and given a tea menu. The menu for the afternoon tea was the same as on their website. Our 'guide', Gordon gave us a runthrough and advised us to be brave with tea choices, no breakfast tea! As we were running late, food arrived while we had a talk from Gordon, he made us laugh and we learned a lot more about the beautiful room - the quirky acoustics, the stunning half ton chandeliers and... I won't give away the one thing which Mrs Cranston insisted Mackintosh couldn't change! The food was very good, lovely sandwiches, superb scones although we found the cakes a little too buttercream based to end with. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

On Sunday, we had a 9am tour with Heather. I'd definitely recommend booking not just the tour, but this time slot as the place doesn't open until 10am and so you can get better photos without other visitors. Heather was an absolutely amazing tour guide! We were the only ones on the tour and so we could ask lots of questions. We toured the tearoom, the Salon du Luxe and even saw the Billiard Room on the top floor, plus photos. Heather's passion, years of research and enthusiasm for Mackintosh and Margaret were wonderful to see. Thank you Heather, you're an absolute asset to the team there!

Mackintosh really was ahead of his time and seeing his work alongside that of his wife, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh was  amazing - his work is more grounded and tangible, hers more spiritual and ethereal. Combined with the business head of the indomitable Mrs Cranston, we can relive...

I booked an afternoon tea for 4:15pm and did call as we were running late, he asked if this was for a afternoon tea, it's worth noting you can book right up until 5pm and then stay until 6:30 but we arrived shortly after 4:30.also be careful as although you can book an afternoon tea right up until 5pm on the website calander, the website states its only until 4pm which caught us out.

Granted I was running late but had called and when I arrived the staff were quite abrupt and came over after seated to state and I quote... You will need to get out at half 5... Lovely way to kick off our session and I wished I had walked out at this stage also, seems odd considering you can book right up until 5pm on their website so I assume they have a considerable length of time for bookings at this time for food ect. Anyways I though that was a rather rude way to state they would need the table back by then.

The afternoon tea felt rushed and they had turned the Coffee machine off, it was over 60 quid for a gin and tonic package with no coffee which is included? we felt like we were a problem to the staff and we apologised but one waiter stated oh were here until 6:30 it was a mixed bag of signals to leave ASAP to we are here until later..but this didn't explain why the coffee machine was off at ten past 5. overall not great experience. It was a way to say thank you to my friend before we headed to an event and needless to say left dissapointed in the service.

The cakes however were fabulous, I liked the Japanese inspired theme but the service let it down.

I would of had far more respect if the staff simply stated they would have to cancel our booking when I called and was running late than...