The best restaurants in Park West Darlington North East

Fabulous. Service is excellent and food very nice.

We had a booking for Sunday lunch as a party of four to celebrate my mum's birthday. We were given a menu which included two courses for £15 or three for £22, which we thought was excellent value. One of our party ordered the ham hock terrine and shortly after ordering, a staff member informed us that this menu item has been changed to "pâté", which we accepted. Our starters arrived, and when a staff member shouted "cucumber", we were confused and somewhat amused as to what this dish was. One of our party had ordered what was listed on the menu as 'trio of vegetable cups filled with hummus, red pepper hummus & sunblushed tomatoes'. It transpired that this was also not on the menu and had been changed for "cucumber bites". The dish that was placed on the table can only be described as something a teenager would make in a GCSE Home Economics class (see photo attached). It consisted of three cucumber rounds with what appeared to be a shop-bought blob of hummus and a piece of cherry tomato on each one, with a heap of dry salad leaves and onion in the middle of the plate. Amongst the confusion, we laughed as we could not believe that this was deemed to be an acceptable dish to serve. Upon reading "the new menu", this dish is described as having two types of hummus and sunblushed tomatoes, which is false advertising based on what we were given. Another member of our party ordered the soup of the day, which was described as vegetable. Three members of our party tasted this dish and agreed that there was an unusual taste (mixture of chemical/vomit) rendering it inedible. The prawn cocktail starter and the pâté starter (subsequently discovered on being given a different menu for pudding, to be game) were both enjoyed. When asked by a manager if we enjoyed our starters, one of our party began to explain issues with the cucumber and soup starters, to be told somewhat flippantly that we had been given "the old menu". It was difficult to articulate the problem with the cucumber starter as the manager seemed to struggle to listen to the problem being described. When informed about the soup, she did offer to get this member of the party another starter, but we declined due to limited choice and this would have delayed our mains. Mains consisted of roast pork, roast beef, and chicken supreme. There was nothing supreme about any of these roast dinners, and we agreed that we could make better at home. Everything tasted bland and unseasoned, and gravy lacked flavour. Yorkshire puddings were hard. On a positive, all meat was nicely cooked and our dishes were nice and hot. Puddings were the highlight of this meal. We enjoyed brownie, crumble, chocolate tart and a cheese board. Due to our experience of this meal, the manager charged all four of us for two courses instead of three, which was appreciated. However, this was initially relayed to us by a young staff member, after the manager had originally walked away without resolution other than the offer of one new starter which was declined (to replace the inedible soup), when we complained about two of the starters. We agreed that it would have been more appropriate for the manager to apologise and relay this information. Overall, the food appears to have gone downhill since previous visits and whilst we appreciated the manager knocking our starters off the bill, we would be unlikely to visit again. It is concerning that they didn't seem to realise how poor the cucumber starter is. Every now and then there are hospitality experiences that are so bad, they are actually funny, and this cucumber offering has to be one of them!

They have a good vegan and vegertarian choice ,The staff were all lovely,The food was good. But we waited an hour and twenty minutes for our food Not acceptable especially when you have kids. Also we had to pay adult prices for kids veggie burgers as they didn’t offer them in kid’s menu. I thought £14.95 a but steep ,also drinks were expensive and made me feel they took so long so you’d have more drinks.there was no blind on the window and it was really hot We booked our table so they knew we were arriving and it was a Tuesday night so you wouldn’t expect to wait that long.