"We booked a table at the Dover Castle to celebrate my Mum’s 60th birthday, as she’d visited previously and liked their food. We came away disappointed. The service was crazily slow throughout our visit, which was ridiculous considering we were the only table on the place for half of our visit our roast dinners eventually came out; our beef was grey and tough with a lot of hard fat, but the other elements of the roast were nice and it was a big portion. Portions sizes were a little inconsistent, as 2 of us had beef pie and mash and their portions were much smaller than the roasts. They were both men and could have eaten it twice. We then waited a long time for them to clear the plates and bring the dessert menu they eventually came and took our order. We ordered some banoffee pie, Eton mess and cheesecake we were later told the cheesecake was sold out, and that there was no whipped cream for the banoffee pie (we assumed this meant that there was no cream to have on the side of the banoffee pie). We opted for clotted cream instead of whipped cream when it came out, the “banoffee pie” was a lump of biscuit base, with some caramel, banana and a blob of clotted cream on top so what they originally meant is that the banoffee pie was not even complete. They served my 81 year old Nan an Eton mess with no cream, and a lump of ice cream on top instead. This was difficult for her to eat, so they swapped it into a bowl and added some clotted cream and some luminous red syrup on top. As the desserts left a lot to be desired, a member of staff did come over and confirmed that they’d be removing the cost of the desserts from our bill which was kind of them. We then had to get up twice to remind them to come and collect our dessert plates, and then again to bring us our bill. When we received our bill, they’d added on a chicken burger meal to our bill which none of us had? So then the waitress had to go off again for another 10 minutes or so to remove that. When she came back over, the waitress said “oh are you all paying separately? That will be fun” a bit sarcastic given our visit there was hardly fun. The service needs a lot of improvement maybe somebody a bit older with a bit more experience. The waitresses were just chatting amongst themselves at the bar, and were just so unaware. They needed to be far more attentive and proactive, we were having to micromanage them on how to actually do their job to get through service. Overall it was just a disappointing visit, especially for my mum’s special birthday celebration. I was embarrassed that we’d chosen to celebrate with her there and had such a bad experience."
