I live in the USA, but visit my family in the Derby area every year or so. I've eaten here before, and my UK family eat here quite often. Never had any complaints. Up until now. We wanted to celebrate a family get-together for 14 people, which meant that we had to pre-order TWO whole weeks beforehand. Kind of hard when you're in the US and then traveling around Europe before arrival. Anyway, no hassle, we found the menu and sent in our order to our UK family to deal with.
Upon arrival, the place was packed, and there was no official hostess around to let you know where you were supposed to be sitting. On a packed night, the teeny tiny bar was jammed with long lines of thirsty customers and we found ourselves hanging out next to people who were trying to eat their dinner. I felt bad for them. We were eventually told we had a private room for our party in the Roosters restaurant. Kinda nice to have that BUT the service was awful. Now I know its a popular place, and the food is supposed to be great, but management should be aware of this and make sure they have sufficient staff to cope. There was no table service for drinks, so a couple of members of our party had to stand in line at the minuscule bar for our 14 or so drinks. And if we needed a refill, they had to go back to the bar themselves.
Food - and drinks - eventually arrived. Gotta say, most of the food was okay but nothing to rave about. My brother and son-in-law both had the belly pork, which apparently must have come from a very fatty pig as there was very little actual meat.
I was looking forward to having some nice dessert to finish off the meal, yet not a waiter/server/busboy
was in sight. No-one came in to offer us the dessert menu. No-one (until we were almost ready to leave) came in to offer coffee.
It's a good job we all enjoyed a good chat and our own company, as this somewhat mollified my disappointment with the experience. If you're a couple , or just out with a couple of friends, probably a great place to go. But don't bother if you have a large party.
Food and ambience at the Queen's Head in nearby Little Eaton was far superior. Try it! read more