Utterly Scrumptious in County Durham

We normally come here once a year to celebrate a birthday but was super disappointed with the experience we had this year and I’m not usually one to write bad reviews. I was looking forward to celebrating my birthday here with my friends. My husband made our reservation for 15-16 people 3 weeks in advance. They sent us an email saying that for large parties, they normally require meal selections ahead of time, but excused it for us and told us to just be patient with the staff (which we always are, we truly didn’t mind, we know the food is worth waiting for!). We had 4 extras try to join our reservation, but the staff said they couldn’t make that work so we did not let them come, no problem! By the time we got seated, the table only had 14 chairs. We kindly & patiently asked them for two more (as our reservation was for 15-16 people) and the manager or whoever she was, came over to our table and approached us in a terrible, extremely negative manner, telling us that our party size was unacceptable (even though we booked in advance and it was accepted). We tried to show her our email exchange with a staff member confirming the party of 15-16 people, in addition to the excusal of preselected meals but she didn’t care (we were still going to pay together on one main bill which was discussed in the email). About 3 minutes or so after this insane reaction, and before even ordering anything, she told us we were going to “annihilate the kitchen” and continued to be so angry with us. This was the worst interaction I’ve ever had from a restaurant employee and she ruined our celebratory birthday dinner that we were all looking forward to. After me and my friends were left speechless with how we were just treated, we left. It was unfortunate because I know this place can be hard to get into, so some servers definitely missed out on a few tables but we did not feel like staying where it was made clear we weren’t welcomed, and instead, were more of an inconvenience to them. If they had told us prior to this, that they couldn’t accommodate our party of 15-16 people, we would’ve understood, we know it’s a lot. But this woman waited until we were sat, to come over and be incredibly rude to us, without even greeting us or working something out (which we would’ve been open to!). Attaching a screenshot below for proof of our conversation. Extremely disappointed with how this was handled and bummed we had this experience that stayed with us for the end of the night.

Good atmosphere and service but was disappointed with the food. The breaded truffle mushrooms were wet, rubbery and tasteless and there was certainly no truffle on them or in the mayo. The hanging skewers were okay but nothing special. Small wine list for a wine bar...

Sunday lunch was lovely the only one thing I could fault was the turnip was very watery