The Undercroft Tearoom at Forde Abbey in West Dorset

Every time we visit these tearooms the choices are very limited. The only thing you can rely upon is Red Pepper and tomato soup £6.10. Do they ever offer any other soup flavour? What if you don’t like red peppers?

Really nice setting, the ladies on the counter were friendly and efficient, the cake and scone were lovely (scone was huge) we enjoyed our visit

Nice setting with outside tables available as well as those in the Undercroft. The offered selection of food is very limited, but the quality is good. Could take a little while to get your order if it is busy but generally not too bad even if it is a bit expensive overall.

Friendly polite staff. Not a great range of refreshments. The service is very slow, 30 mins from start to finish for 2 coffees as they are also preparing and serving food. Could do with a separate service if you just want drinks? The inside and outside of the croft are beautiful and full of history Worth a visit.

We enjoyed a good cup of coffee and a generous portion of homemade cake here during or visit to the Abbey.

These tearooms are in an excellent location, look great and had loads of available tables inside to chose from. We had high hopes of an enjoyable lunch. But, we didn’t get off to a great start as it took ages to get served and then a further long wait for our sandwiches to arrive. At £6.95 a sandwich we were expecting great things, especially as we knew they were being freshly made, but they were very disappointing particularly so as the bread used was well past its best. In fact, the white bread in one of the sandwiches was so dry it was really only suitable for toasting. Told a member of staff that the kitchen should know that the bread should not have been used for a sandwich. She said she was sorry about that and would tell them but we never heard anything back…. We would definitely visit Forde Abbey again but would not revisit the tearooms for our lunch.

Lovely tea, coffee and cakes. Highly recommend the scones and also the lemon and blueberry cake. Have been before a number of times in past 20 years, and my husband always hopes the pineapple upside down cake will be on the menu!

We did have a long wait for food. They seemed short staffed , there was only one person serving & taking payments. Other staff were taking the food out . Some tables needed clearing. The food on offer was soup, panini, savoury & sweet scones and a selection of cakes.

Good location,Understaffed. poor lunch snacks. At 1pm no advertised snacks available, except 6 chicken Blinis. We ordered 4. They were under cooked, the accompanying "salad" was clearly not from the Kitchen gardens as advertised, (a "as bought selection of small cherry tomatoes and rocket) and were expensive at £7.95 each Take your own lunch

We visited on a very wet Sunday afternoon in mid May and were pleasantly surprised that it was still open. What a great building it is situated in - sadly you couldn't sit inside because of covid rules but there were trestle tables in the yard outside. We enjoyed a coffee and biscuit and were impressed with the wide selection of ginger beers on offer. An added bonus was that you could have an alcoholic drink if wanted - a real plus. Well worth going to if only for the lovely building. Good toilets nearby.

A very disappointing visit. Queued for ages at 1.45 pm and then took a long time for our food to come out of the kitchen. I hate to think what it would be like once the summer holidays start. After looking round the vegetable gardens and admiring all the veg they grew there, I was most disappointed to be served lettuce, tomato and cucumber with my (chewy) smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches. Come on, please, you can do much better than that! However, on the plus side, my companion said that his pheasant and apricot terrine was very good and he had a much better mixed salad for only 30p more - although he wasn't sure if the 'toast' was just hard bread, as it had barely been shown the toaster. Hope our next visit will be a better experience.

After a guided tour of the house which lasted 90 minutes a light lunch was very welcome. I tried the special; pheasant bacon and apricot terrine with toast and a really good mixd side salad and abbey pickle. Very good. The choice of fillings for panini, sandwiches and jacket potatoes was good, plus lots of different coffees, fair trade tea, luscombes bottled drinks, and wine. There were 5 different home made cake on offer too. Plus ice cream. the taff were well organised and although lots of people placed orders for food it arrived very quickly, was well presented and generous.

Towards the end of the day, but a quick snack and much needed coffee set us up for the journey home. Very pleasent staff (especially after what was a very busy day) made our 'Chill out' very welcome

We took a packed lunch for our visit but didn't need it as this tearoom was able to accommodate a Coeliac needing gluten free food. The choice although enticing isn't immediately GF friendly but the staff couldn't have been more helpful. They understood the requirements of avoiding cross contamination and put together something for us using more ingredients than were actually on the menu. Fast service but they had time to talk as well.

Really enjoyed our lunch/afternoon tea here. Really great location and a good selection of excellent food.

If your spending a day visiting the Abbey you can visit the tea room for, coffee, lunch and tea, hearty homemade soup and yummy cake

Considering we visited on the 1st weekend of the school holidays it wasn't packed and the service was ok. The menu wasn't huge but there was something for everyone. We opted for jacket potatoes with tuna, the salad that came with it was lovely not your normal spiky lettuce and may be a tomato but this was lovely fresh produce from their own kitchen gardens, which included radish, beans, tomatoes, cucumber lovely fresh lettuce. Well worth a visit. We sat inside and was amazed by the ceilings but there is seating outside.

Serving some very well presented fare The Undercroft is definitely a cut above the average tearoom.A good selection of luncheon menu options, served with salad, are available.The food served in The Undercroft is either cooked on site using produce grown at Forde Abbey or sourced from local producers.The walled kitchen garden at Forde Abbey and the soft fruit grown on the estate provide much of the seasonal fresh produce served here.An excellent ice cream selection is also available.