Ground Bakery — Restaurant in Wales

From January-March 2023, Ground Bakery in Pontcanna are hosting Tom Waters Gorse Restaurant pop up. On the night we visited, it was fully booked and by the quality of the cooking I can see why. The venue was a lovely setting for a pop up, clean and natural decor, with soft lighting and music. Really warm welcome and allowed to choose a table of our choice as we were early. We chose a table at the back where there is a window into the kitchen. The menu is a taster menu of 9 courses. Service was prompt and started with a lovely seaweed broth, which was delicious. Then we were served a trio of canapés with the Sika deer on hash brown being my favourite. The cute warm buttermilk roll with Nori butter was so smooth, with a glazed crust I could have eaten 3 or 4! The star of the show & I feel it becoming a signature dish was the Mackerel, served with cris apple flowers and warming Horseradish. Desserts were all high quality, with brown butter ice cream being a surprise favourite. You can also opt for the wine tasting. The only dish that felt a mister was the turnip-I am not a cheese enthusiast so it was a struggle to digest. However this did not distract from a fantastic evening of food and highly recommend if you can make a booking before it finishes. Wish Tom all best on establishing a permanent...

Review for Ground Beef (Not Ground Cafe but in same location on Fri and Sat evenings)

As a lover of ground’s baked goods and grazing sheds delicious burgers I was excited to try their new Pontcanna collab.

Burgers were as good as always but not really an elevation on what Grazing Shed normally offers. Opening weekend so understandably small menu with only one option, so hopefully this will be expanded as they find their feet. The potato bun was great.

Food score is lower than the food deserves as the drinks were so disappointing. Pre-mixed cocktails charged at £10 and the thinnest thick shake I’ve ever seen, small in size and charged at £6.50. If you’re going to charge £10 a cocktail, in line with cocktail bars, I would expect to see someone actually making them rather than pouring the whole cocktail mix from a bottle straight into a glass over ice. Perhaps this is something that’s in place for opening weekend, again while they find their feet.

Service needs attention as well, plenty of staff and only a small amount of tables in the restaurant so no...

CUSTOMER SERVICE - I would never go to the effort of writing a poor review unless it really was that poor. I Walked into Ground to two scowling staff members (one young male & one young female) . I was completely ignored, not even aknowledged until a staff member appeared 10 minutes later enquiring had I been seen,the staff appeared miserable and the reception generally unpleasant. - CUSTOMER SERVICE - AWFUL.

QUANTITY - I ordered a breakfast bun to take away - I was nothing short of shocked upon opening it (picture attached) a tiny round little bun with a cold tasteless egg and a tiny tasteless “pattie” - QUANTITY - AWFUL.

QUALITY - It’s not elite quality and not even decent, it was basic to say the least - QUALITY - AWFUL.

PRICE - For this experience I was charged £10 and had to make an alternative breakfast at home - DISGUSTING.

They won’t last long with this...