The Olive Grove — Restaurant in West Suffolk

The food here is the star. Simply exquisite Chicken thighs were the biggest surprise to me ( usually prefer red meat), very tender moist and full of flavour. Kleftiko lamb very tender, delicious flavours. Sharing platter to start also excellent. All food presented superbly as well. Cocktails, and 'cheapest' wine also very good.

Only minor criticism is the service, and I hope the owners take this in the right frame of mind as constructive criticism. This consists of very young staff that just bring your food out and don't really know the art of how to "wait" by observation of their diners for physical clues as to what they need and feel. This lets down the premium feel of the dining experience which clearly the restaurant aspires to, something that cannot be achieved by the food alone.

They clearly are sixth-formers or recent school leavers who do not want to do this work for a living and want some extra pocket money - that is fair enough, but I did the same 30 years ago, and even as an 18 year old took pride in my work even though I had no intention of staying in that trade.

Some tips: if your diner is still clearly eating, do not ask them if they have finished - convention is to put knife and fork together and sit back - watch the body language do not ask them how the food is when they have yet to eat even one bite - and preferably then wait at least 5 to 10 minutes do offer tap water given there were plenty of glasses out for this, and definitely bring it when asked for (we had to twice). spend more time talking and looking at the diners rather than the other staff - in that way you can see when they are needing another drink (as their glass is empty), or trying to gain your attention e.g. to get the bill - they should not have to shout out/wave to you do offer dessert 5 minutes or so after taking away the finished mains if they have not asked for the bill yet - this was not offered to us, which we would have said no to anyway, but it's within the principle of waiting tables.

Some schooling in waiting tables is required here to bring the service up to deserving the service charge that is of course is added to the bill without asking. I would prefer my £11-odd service charge to be...

Visited today for the first time. When we arrived (5 mins early) the door was open and a man was stood in the doorway on the phone, we got up to the door to be told "we're not open" - literally nothing else!! And in a miserable tone. First impressions, f'in rude. We walked away and came back 2 mins after our booking time to see if we could go in. This time, thankfully, we were greeted properly and both ladies that served our table were lovely. Had high hopes as love Greek food but if this is the best they can do, this place won't last. The pork gyro was nice, lovely flavour but meat was over cooked, only 6 chips and could have done with more salad. The baklava was unusual and not the typical pistachio one you get elsewhere.. nice in the first 2 bites but as I got into it, it had hard/set chunks of fat which was disgusting. Wouldn't hurry back. EDIT: Having openly acknowledged how bad your baklava was, the fact you still allowed it to be served and were happy to take people's money for it speaks volumes. Having been to Greece myself many, many times, I am well aware of how authentic ones should be and how the Greeks manage to crispen the pork without over cooking it and drying it out. Seeing as you were obviously watching me eat, perhaps you should know the reason I ate it with a knife and fork (not exactly "taken apart") is because my teeth don't meet to enable me to bite into things. Nowhere did I mention wishing I'd had a "fully loaded meal" and quite frankly the tone of the response was about as friendly and condescending as the chap...

The food we had was very nice but the service was very slow. We were waiting for one guest to arrive so the waiter said he would come back. The guest had been been with us about 15 minutes or so before the waiter came back and that was with us calling him over.

We had starters and when they were cleared away we had to wait quite a while for the mains to come out. When we had finished and the plates had been cleared away it took about 15 minutes to get the attention of the waiter to ask for the dessert menu. 10 minutes later we had to ask again. This time it was the waitress who came over but she didn't give us the menu she just told us what was on it.

We asked for the bill once the dessert finally arrived (we had to ask for it) as it was only for the children and we thought that the waiter would come back to the table for us to pay.

We stood up looking around to get someone's attention and it took nearly 10 minutes to be waved up to the front desk.

We wanted to take the service charge off because we weren't happy as we felt we didn't get any service but we were so fed up and wanted to leave so to get the bill changed would have taken longer so we just paid it. Plus in our frustration we forgot to ask for our blue light discount which made us unhappy as not only did we want to try our new local restaurant that was also one of the attractions of our visit.

We did tell the waitress how we felt when we left and we did compliment the kitchen as the food...