We have visited The Mount a few times over the past few years and each time it seems to be getting even better.
You could be forgiven for thinking people just come for the view which is pretty amazing looking west but the quality of service and food were impeccable and put many pure restaurants to shame.
While it was a busy sunny Sunday and we were at an outside table easily forgotten by less attentive waiting the staff, the service was impeccable with perfect timing between the courses.
We both had the very seasonal and very local warm asparagus salad and for mains I had the roast sirloin of beef and my wife had the smoked haddock with a delicious poached egg, again (to her surprise having not read the menu carefully) on a bed of asparagus.
For dessert we shared a bowl of organic chocolate ice cream and I had a cafetiere of coffee which compared to the tiny cups you often get served made a pleasant change with 3 cups easily extracted.
A quirk of this place is that all food must be ordered at the bar and if you sit outside you can't run a tab and have to pay for the meal there and then and you must have a table number when you order which means it takes some planning with both people choosing from the menu then going back outside to bag a table, then the other person going back to order equipped with the required table number.
This is worth the effort but after the main course it took around 10 minutes of queueing at the bar to order the dessert and coffee due to just one overworked person taking orders and serving drinks and taking payments (mainly by cards). Somewhat frustratingly, while I was away, the server asked my wife if we wanted anything else so I am a little confused as to the correct procedure.
Ironically this paying up front procedure makes it very hard to leave a tip which considering the receipt states clearly service is not included and more importantly the quality of the service, is a bit of a pity.
You should also be aware of the opening and food serving times as like all good food pubs it doesn't stay open all day every day nor does it serve food all the time that it's open.
Update we visited again on the first weekend of July 2011 and it appears to be losing it's the sparkle.
The girl behind the bar who was taking all the food orders was stressed and showing it this time. The toilets need some work desperately, surely there must be a way of not having the window above the gents urinals opening out onto a table? The food was pretty average, the potato daupinoise side dish which was always a lovely bonus, this time was dry and tasteless. And to top it all off some loud blonde alcoholic middle aged woman who arrived in a yellow Mazda MX5 (as a passenger) forced herself onto our (cosy for 4 people) table when other tables close by were unoccupied while I was performing the laborious ordering process. When I returned I advised her she was obscuring the view we had travelled here to admire and we relocated to one of the many other tables that were still available, I also knew our food would fill the table completely. We were amazed when we worked out she wasn't alone and had been waiting for a bloke to join us at the table too we were less amazed when she made a fake phone call mentioning how rude people were here today before that my wife had observed here trying all the seats to show that she wasn't obscuring the view crazy. read more