Café Rouge - Center Parcs Elveden — Restaurant in West Suffolk

A horrific evening at a restaurant. It may even have been the worst experience I have had in a restuarant, period, and ruined our final night at Centre Parcs.

This establishment has the audacity to give you a 90 minute window to stay and finish your meals when booking, whilst we were in there in total for almost 3 hours to have two courses for 7 people.

There was only 1 bottle of Merlot left and there were multiple other items not available on the menu.

A member of our group has celiac desease, and ordered a gluten free starter which comes with gluten free bread. Upon arrival, it had a plate full of normal bread. This is completely and utterly unacceptable for a restuarant that promotes having gluten free options. If your chefs aren't competent enough to read the orders correctly, don't handle food that requires very specific and strict requirements. The funny thing is we had a £25 voucher to use that evening because we had the same experience at another Cafe Rouge which led to an entire evening spent vomitting and potential damage done to someones stomache and liver. Upon giving Cafe Rouge another chance they instantly blundered on the very first hurdle. The starter was sent back, but took a further 20 minutes to come back out freshly made and gluten free, by that point everyone else had finished their starters.

We then had to wait 90 -- NINETY -- minutes for our mains to arrive, which still did not all arrive at once, there was a near 10 minute window between the first and final mains being brought out.

We were not apologised to, we were just given excuses repeatedly.

Many of us did not even finish our mains as we were so angry and frustrated by this point.

I would not reccommend Cafe Rouge in general or this particular establishment if my life depended on it. They clearly do not value the health or time of...

Having taken advantage of their coffee and cake offer for £3.95 each at Cafe Rouge,Whinfell we thought we would do it again at Elveden on Friday 13th January, (we should have known that something would go wrong on this date!) We went to the door and waited to be seated but were told they weren't taking any more customers until 11.30 am. As we were with our daughter, son in law and two young grandchildren they wanted to be seated and getting something to eat so they went off to the pancake house so my husband and I thought we don't mind waiting another 20 minutes so we went back only to be told by the same waitress that they were now not taking customers until noon. This time I said I don't believe that in this day and age when business' want trade you are turning us, and several other people, away and that we didn't mind waiting. She replied that it was their policy that customers shouldn't wait more than 15 minutes, but I said it is our choice to wait but she still turned us away! On my return home I found their web site and done an on line questionnaire which was offering £250 every month for a lucky contributor so I filled it in and received an email from a female who was very apologetic and ensured that the restaurant would be informed and reassured me it wouldn't happen again. I requested as a form of compensation two free coffee and cakes, totalling £7.90, she refused saying that their compensation was to ensure it didn't happen again! I said but you are giving £250 a month away to people for completing a questionnaire but you won't give us a mere £7.90! No, was her reply! I was obviously very disappointed with her response and feel Center Parcs would be as well because they take complaints very seriously.

Visited...

Food is terrible compared to a standard cafe rouge. Firstly the menu had run out of the most popular options (no chicken liver pate, fishcakes, beef bourgnion, no bernaise sauce for salmon or steaks). Service from the waitress was good but the front of house was terrible (asked to be seated outside but had a change of mind as my four year old was cold and asked to move inside, and having the manager muttering 'there driving me nuts') is not a good start to the day. We ordered the moules mourinere (the sauce was watery, mussels was well overcooked) only positive was the portion size. Ordered the Mac and cheese and fish goujons off the kids menu, the Mac and cheese looked like and tasted as if it was out in the microwave, very rubbery. Fish goujons had seen better days but was probably the best of the options we choose. The final main course was the fish and chips which was heavily battered and over fried with a very crispy dark brown batter which was very heavy and had to be removed in order to taste the fish. If your coming to center parcs choose another restaurant or alternatively cook in doors rather than going here. The only positive was the waiting staff who tried to do their best and I hope the tips I gave go to the staff more than the holding company, overall...