Curious Fox — Restaurant in Skipton

We have travelled up to the Dales twice a year for many years & stayed in a lot of different hotels, pubs, B&Bs etc. This time decided to stay in Skipton. We booked 3 nights at The Curious Fox which was a good decision. We always look at reviews of places to get any tips & we booked directly as had seen that breakfast was not included if booked through other sites. Always look at booking directly with places, sometimes you get better deals. We also saw the restaurant was closed on Monday & Tuesday & Tuesday was our arrival day. Not a problem though, we booked a table at another nice local restaurant. On the Tuesday morning we had a nice friendly phone call & message from Lee asking about our arrival time. We said we would be arriving earlier than the normal check in time but he said it wasn't a problem & the room would be ready. Good start. Upon arrival we were warmly greeted by a member of staff, shown to our room & everything was explained to us re breakfast, restaurant opening times, facilities etc. Also mentioned car parking as it's only a small car park & we gave our car registration number as the car park is monitored for non residents. Lovely walk along the canal in the afternoon followed by a nice evening meal in Le Caveau, a good restaurant just around the corner & a nice option for when the Curious Fox restaurant is closed. Slept very well in the comfy bed & in the morning, breakfast was extremely tasty with a good selection of dishes on the menu & great friendly service. Everything still going well. On Wednesday we drove up to Ribblehead & walked up & over Whernside, the highest of the Yorkshire 3 Peaks. When we got back to The Curious Fox we booked a table for an evening meal. Showered & freshened up we went down to the delightfully designed & presented bar & restaurant, had a drink & were shown to our table, again, all the staff very friendly & professional. Absolutely wonderful meal with a nice atmosphere in the restaurant, starters & mains were very nicely presented, just the right size portions, extremely tasty & we even managed to share a dessert. Decent wine list too. Slept well again & down for the excellent breakfast. Thursday, as the weather was far better than forecast, we did another walk, locally this time around Embsay Reservoir & then up to Embsay Crag from which you get wonderful 360 degree views of stunning scenery. Back to the Curious Fox & because we enjoyed our previous night's meal, we booked a table for the evening. Once again we had a most enjoyable meal & knew we had made the right choice to dine in the restaurant again. Breakfast on Thursday, our final day was, as usual, wonderfully presented & tasty. We had no problems at all during our stay, everything was really good, room, bed, food, communication & all the staff were very friendly & a credit to the business. We had some good chats with Lee & Janette who are both excellent friendly hosts. The dogs are nice too! All in all, a great 3 night stay. We have family who own & run a small boutique hotel/restaurant/venue so understand all the hard work that goes into providing a good experience for their guests & the team & The Curious Fox have absolutely nailed it! This is how hospitality should be. We would not hesitate to stay at The Curious Fox again, in fact, it will probably be in September. Thanks guys, kind regards,...

Myself and my partner had heard good things about the Curious fox, its modern branding had me excited, and being Skipton residents we saw it as a good opportunity to find a new local favourite. Unfortunately our experience did not live up to expectations.

We visited on Sunday, looking to take advantage of their roast offering, my partner being a non-meat eater opted for a vegan nut roast, I’d gone for a pork chop on the bone (their roast of the week special). My partner had asked if the Yorkshire pudding would be still be served alongside (given the milk and eggs traditionally used wouldn’t be suitable for a vegan) we were notified this would be fine and there would be a suitable alternative (important to note at this point the waiting staff still assumed my partner was vegan).

Skip forward to when the main meals arrived, We both immediately noticed something strange, the Yorkshire pudding on my partners plate looked very similar to that on my own.. Now if you’ve ever attempted to make vegan Yorkshire puddings you will understand that the lack of eggs and dairy results in a distinguishable difference between that of the traditional counterpart, in both the density and size of the puddings. Outside of my own culinary knowledge, I had no evidence to support my suspicions, however any chef or establishment that chooses to be disingenuous of a dietary requirement medical or not, does not get a good stamp in my book.

We then move on to my pork, which was was a decent cut, it had a nice sear on both sides except for the large fat cap, which was barely rendered and looked like it had been briefly blowtorched to give it the appearance of crackling, at this point my partner had mentioned her nut roast was cold but out of social embarrassment opted to continue with her meal as did I with the crackling.. At the very point of me cutting into the eye of the chop, the waitress who had served us came over to perform a check back, only to witness as I did, the inside of a raw pork chop. She apologised profusely and said she would return within two minutes. Given the size of the chop I knew that there was no chance for the meat to be cooked in that time, but understood she had stated this as a reassuring comment, her retort however wasn’t far wrong as two minutes later the pork chop reappeared with fresh gravy covering, followed by the chef himself. I sliced into the pork and as you’d expect, the meat was still raw, however to avoid further embarrassment I opted to state that I will cut around the raw sections and continue to eat, at this point my partner was almost finished.

The most disappointing part of the meal actually wasn’t the pork, it was the then backtracked response I received from the staff in which they stated that the pork was actually intended to be served ‘rare’. In the UK it’s very uncommon you’d see rare pork in a restaurant especially without warning on a menu. It was rather insulting to be told that it was supposed to be rare, when indeed it was just raw..

Any recompense for this? Nope… £23 for a Yorkshire pudding, two potatoes and some vegetables, fair to say I won’t be recommending this...

Arrived on time for our booked table to be told our table wasn’t available and we’d have to wait. No apology, but ok, we’ll have a drink and wait a bit. Then one on the bar staff smashed a glass covering one of our party. Again no apology, but accidents happen.

45 minutes waiting after threatening to leave we eventually got our table and managed to order the food. This lead to another extended wait until our meals arrived. Food was adequate for most of the party, but certainly not good enough for the prices they’re charging.

In the end we spoke to one of the managers who appeared drunk. Explained we were not happy with the service we’d received. Still no apology. They did knock the cost of a bottle of Prosecco off the bill, so I’ll give them that, the manager was struggling to string a sentence together so in the end we just asked for the bill, paid and got out.

In general the whole experience was awful. With better management and some customer service experience the situation could have been defused and managed much better. This could be a nice restaurant but in general I would advise not to bother.

In response to the comments below. I did put a timer on my phone, but only after we’d been waiting for 30 mins and we’re getting annoyed, 30 + 15 =45. Hence my original comment about the 45 minute wait. Yes none of my party were hurt by the glass being broken, however one was covered in it and there was no apology made. None of my party made any derogatory comments about the bar staff or waitress and can assure you that there was no abusive or threatening language used and no one collared any staff. We did attempt to speak to the manager, however he seemed to be struggling to speak or string words together.

This whole situation has occurred because it was not managed at all, never mind badly. I do agree that you can’t please everyone. Would be better to use this as a lesson to learn from and improve.

I would suggest recruiting someone with some restaurant management experience and try not to make up stories to justify bad service and a honest but...