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The Lavender House
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Welcome to mo4, we hope to help you with
information, reviews and let you know what's happening in the area of
Norwich, Norfolk and beyond.
Lavender
House Restaurant in Brundall, on the outskirts of Norwich, Norfolk -
Serving up high quality food and offering excellent service.
This is a place i've been to a couple of times before, i've enjoyed it
in the past and I had heard that Richard Hughes had made some changes
to it, updating the furniture and selection of wines - so I thought
what a great opportunity to put a good quality restaurant on the
website.
On this occasion I had guests with me so I was assured that this would
be a great place to take them for excellent food, but I was disappointed to say that maybe
another restaurant would have been more suitable after the
experience I had there.
This english restaurant isn't the cheapest and is renowned for it's quality of
food and service.
After arriving we are greeted by the friendly staff who seated in the
reception area where drinks and nibbles were served, this I think is a
great way to start to keep that hunger at bay!
We were escorted through to the main restaurant and taken over to our
table - I ensured that my guests were seated but I was concered that
the 4th seat had very little room for someone to sit - I'm not a big
person so i was surprised how I was supposed to squeeze into the gap,
the chair could hardly be pulled out and I could only fit one leg in,
the staff did notice our difficulty so did try to re-arrange the table
a bit so that I could seat myself properly. I was just so surprised
that they hadn't experience this problem before, surely the table is
situated in the same place every night!?!?
Anyway, that wasn't the greatest of starts, a little embarrassing but
nevertheless I just put it down to one of those things! We looked at
the menu, and the choice was varied - of course these are special meals (menu for 1-2 weeks)
that are cooked and changed on a regular basis. They serve good english
food and there was something for everyone.
We ordered our food and the wine was brought over, but I was
disappointed that it wasn't even opened and served for us, normally
with high service in the Lavender House it would be done without
asking. I was starting to wonder at this stage whether standards had
dropped here.
The starters arrived and were put onto the table, there was a great
choice of foods and I started with the Pork but I was even more
disappointed that the starters have dropped in size too, it
wasn't much more than a mouthful, I was starting to think he'd
change it to nouvelle cuisine! In a restaurant like the Lavender House
you don't expect healthy portions as it is quality that you expect
most, but the size of starters had certainly reduced in sized compared
to my previous visits to the a la carte restaurant - could it get any
worse!? Well i went for my cutlery so I could start eating, but I found
that some of my cutlery was missing! My forks were not there...! This I
thought was just careless how could this be missed, I allowed
my
guests to eat as I didn't want their food to go cold, eventually after
some time I managed to get one of the staff member's attention who
kindly got my missing cutlery, but by this time my starter had got
cold. This I don't expect from a restaurant that offers high quality
food and very attentive service.
The food itself was good, but I felt that some of the changes in the
restaurant weren't for the best, the decor hadn't changed, new
furniture had replaced the old furniture which was an
improvement
- but food and service was starting to become an issue for me.
We had finished our main courses which I did think was very good - I
had the lamb and the quality and the way it was cooked was perfect, it
was a very enjoyable main course and hoped that this would be the
turning point for the Lavender House.
Desserts came and gone - and the quality was adequate. One of my guests
had ordered cheese and crackers, but he was disappointed to find that
the crackers were actually in fact biscuits - he wasn't impressed to
eat good cheese with biscuits, in fact he was almost put off by it all
- I asked one of the staff whether they did actually have some
crackers, but apparently no crackers were available at all. The only
alternative was bread which my guest did accept, but I must say very
disappointing indeed - I didn't think that the Lavender House was being
very accomdating nor did they seem very attentive.
Overall, the meal was okay, but I didn't feel that it was worth the money
we had paid for the it - I hadn't been disappointed in the past with the Lavender House, but
this time it was one meal that would put me off taking guests there
again. I would like to think this was just a one-off but my view would
be, if you are keen on a restaurant that offers good food and service,
then risk it and take a chance, if you're not so keen to pay a lot of
money on a restaurant but would like to treat yourself, then you're
probably best to go elsewhere maybe some where like Adlards.
Richard Hughes at the Lavender House also offers cooking classes at the
weekend - he produces a range of cooking books too.
My Rating:
Disappointing
If you decide
you
would like to try the Lavender House in Brundall then book a
table
by calling telephone number 01603 712215. Don't
forget to tell them that mo4 sent you!
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