The Orangery Restaurant in Tunbridge Wells

This is the main restaurant for the Spa Hotel - a lovely hotel in Tunbridge Wells. We expected it therefore to be at least good and cancelled a restaurant booking in town to try it. There were very few customers when we went at 6.00pm on a Saturday evening. The restaurant itself is lovely inside and has great views and friendly, helpful and good humoured waiting staff who were brilliant with our 4 year old daughter. The problem is the food. It is expensive but hardly even mediocre. Our bread platter had bread that was so dry our daughter couldn’t eat it and we returned it. My starter was a meat terrine that was frankly a dull slab and rather tasteless. My wife had salmon mosaic starter that again was bland. Our main courses were pork belly - with mashed potato that tasted like Smash - and a vegetable petit pain concoction that was small and tasteless. My daughter had ‘fish and chips’ where the fish pieces were mainly a very dry batter like substance. Again she left most of it: I ate some to see why and regretted it. Dessert for her was fine but it was just fruit and ice cream. So the meal was expensive, very disappointing and very slow indeed to be served - amazingly so when at first we were the only diners. This is such a shame as breakfast in the morning is fine and again the serving staff are excellent. We will definitely stay at the hotel again but next time we won’t be having an evening meal in the restaurant!

Unfortunatley the meal we had on Friday night was terrible. They had got part of our order wrong (although they didn't tell us, we could just see them having a heated discussion at the door) so, when we eventually got our food the fish had clearly been sitting under a heat lamp for 20/30 mins while they cooked the other dish. Obviously you can't do that with fish so it was very dry, a bit cold and served with some chewy pasta. Rather than offering a drink or something on the house they just said 'oh'. Given they knew they had made an error and still chose to serve substandard food rather than cook it fresh, they made no attempt to rectify, I genuinely don't understand how the chef was happy to let this go out the door. We didn't bother with dessert and didn't go back. Poor food and below average service.

If you’re vegan or vegetarian think twice before dining here!! The menu sounds good but in reality it’s not as advertised or worth the money. The Portobello Mushroom Keiv was literally a mushroom on a bed of rocket over seasoned with salt very disappointing as there was no variety in texture as the keiv was missing the crunch. There was more tomato sauce than vegetables in the Roast Vegetable Moussaka. I needed bread to finish the meal. To my surprise I was charged £4 extra for a portion of bread despite the fact I initially asked for a slice. On a positive note the koffman fries were cooked to perfection! Nevertheless after two disappointing vegan meals I decided not to take any chances with my dessert and swapped the gingerbread toffee pudding for something from the main dinner menu praying it would be worth it. However, as feared the pear frangipane tart was just as disappointing as this was a cake baked in the shape of a tart. No sign of any shortcrust pastry!! I’m just extremely disappointed with the food and to pay so much for what I received was disheartening. Based on this dining experience although the service from the staff was good, scenery of the hotel garden and the ambiance was spot on. Unfortunately I will not be recommending or booking another reservation at The Orangery restaurant. However, the treatments from the Spa Spa Health and Leisure on the other hand is something to recommend!

the service was excellent with great choices on the menu my steak was done perfectly and there was a couple of vegetarian options which my wife loved

We stayed last year, and new we wanted to return for a romantic getaway. We stayed for Valentines Day and enjoyed the amazing romantic atmosphere in the Orangery Restaurant. The staff were amazing, and were so helpful throughout the evening. The food was incredible, we wished we could have eaten the whole menu when we saw other dishes being served to other tables. Our food choices were the most delicious food we have enjoyed in a while. Thoroughly enjoyed our time and will recommend the Spa and the Orangery to anyone! 10 out of 10!

9 x guests in a privately hired room. Disappointing; definitely not worth the cost. We were largely ignored, food was poorly displayed mostly on dinner plates. Choice of cake not afternoon tea quality, and certainly not reflective of the hotel’s marketing material. One of the waiting staff was rude. We will not be returning.