Lanercost Tea Room - A Tasteem Review
The Lanercost Tea Room is situated outside the Lanercost Priory, close to Hadrian’s Wall which in turn is close to the Scottish border.
We arrived quite hungry but not expecting a lot, this being one of those café add-ons designed for tourists. If it was going to be decent, then that would be a bonus!
One positive aspect was it was a new building, and clean. On entering noticed to the left was the dog-friendly restaurant, but with us being dog-free on this occasion we turned right and entered a medium-sized sitting area which was reasonably full.
This is not one of those ‘wait to be seated’ places; you just sit your arse down anywhere, the best kind I feel.
I gazed at the menu, there were not a lot of choices, but that's not necessarily bad.
The prices were a tad high but seeing as our other choices of eating was to join the local cows in the field chewing grass we had little in terms of options.
@bingbabe went for the only rice-based dish being the Sweet Potato Curry at £8.50. That sounded insanely boring to me, but who am I to decide for her?
It was Chicken in a Basket & Fries at £8.99 for me, but wait a minute…, ‘fries?’.. we are in England right. We don't say fries here, its chips godammit!
You do need to get your own cutlery at the Lanercost Tea Room and I noticed a decent selection of cakes and whatnot while wondering close to the front counter.
Our food was delivered promptly but it all started going downhill from this point.
My fries actually were 'fries' and looked great. Clean, crisp and fresh I thought but after a few bites, I started to get bored.
This very occasionally happens with food. It gives you that great first impression, but then reality sets in and the initial taste mutates to something like cardboard followed by your jaws seizing up.
Maybe some salt would have helped, but I couldn’t find any. The chicken was minimal in volume, a little overcooked and equally tasteless.
Twenty minutes later I managed to finish it off, though it was hard work and my jaws ached under the strain.
@bingbabe was having little success with the Sweet Potato Curry slating it to be tasteless and needing some flavouring to be added. She stopped short at my suggestion of pouring some Monosodium Glutamate power over it.
I can be helpful sometimes, just call me under-appreciated.
We paid up and left a little disgruntled.
I strolled into the dog café just out of nosiness to see what it looked like. Besides being void of people, there were a lot of doggy snaps everywhere.
The hostess told me that we could have eaten in this section without a dog. Well, I could have guessed that one.
I saw no dog treats or Winalot for sale. I guess the dogs just have to watch and drool over anyone in there while the humans eat.
Sorry Lanercost Tea Room, but I can’t recommend you to anyone. Nice environment, but deadly boring food.
Restaurant Information
Lanercost Tea Room
Abbey Farm, Lanercost, Brampton CA8 2HQ, UK
This post participated in the Tasteem contest Your weekly choice
They kill it with the name though, eh. Bark and Brew, it's smashing. Shame the food was dull!
Yes looks can be deceiving.., looked great but zero taste.
When I get chips like that I usually slather them in brown sauce. One way out of a bland situation!
I remember when chicken in a basket was introduced in pubs, everyone was so excited, especially the manager from the local budgens (the shop that's not quite right), he was beside himself, I think he came in every night after work. I know what you mean about them chips, they're hard work.
I have had some decent chicken-in-a-basket. It's supposed to be cheap food, but wasn't at this place. Budgens, are they still going? I have seen some but no recently.
it has been my experience with dog cafes in the past that they don't have to necessarily be a good value or serve good food because the dog owners are going to come anyway. However, that doesn't appear to be the case here since there were no dogs. Of course I live in Asia so 8 pounds 50 sounds high to me for anything especially chicken and chips (and yeah, why TF are you guys using "fries"?? sacrilege!)
To be fair it was off season and I think those pics were genuine. In summer the place would be full despite the crappy food.
You don't see the word fries often here outside of McDonalds.
looked like that meal could have been better if accompanied by the advertised "brew"? and fries with no salt?!
LOL.. a 'brew' is a local colloquialism for tea or coffee. I believe it's a northern term though I may be wrong about that.
lol!
That's too bad that it turned out that way. Based on the size of those fries I would definitely call them "Fries". Your chips seem to be more the size of our steak fries, much heartier and larger cut. That is too bad that the other stuff was not up to snuff. Over here we have the stereotype that English food is bland. I don't know if it is true or not, but based on that stereotype for you to say the food is bland makes it seem doubly so for me. I just recently read a news story about MSG and the fact that it isn't necessarily bad for you. The original stigma from it was based on lack of information and incorrect information. They are actually finding now that it has some health benefits for you. I don't know how accurate it is, but I thought it interesting none the less.
They call those big ones, thick cut but they are more like door stoppers. I want something in between McDonalds fries and half a potato!
The thick cut ones are quite a new phenomenon here and an unwelcome one in my books.
We call those potato wedges I think.
Some of the menu items sounded tasty. Too bad the reality didn't turn out that way.
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No salt even, omg. Chicken looked just a tad under totally burnt. Shame.
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