Daleside Garden Centre - Flintshire

Not great and very expensive for what you get esp the size of cups for coffee. The toilets were in a dreadful state as well.

We decided to pop into the Daleside Garden Centre one weekday lunchtime, hoping to have a quick tasty lunch with the little one. Living close by, we try to support and make the most of our local pubs, restaurants etc. We have been for food quite a few times and on those occasions we have been happy. Unfortunately, this visit was not a great experience at all. I can only think that they were either having an off day, or there has been a change in kitchen staff since we last visited. I ordered a cheese and chutney sandwich which was served on two thin slices of white bloomer bread. The cheese was grated but I would say that they must have been running low on cheese as there was hardly any in there! This was served with roughly 4-5 crisps and a wet salad. The salad was so sloppy it put me off the food immediately. The chutney was served in a small jar but again, wasn 't very tasty and not enough to cover the sandwich. Safe to say, I didn 't eat any of this. Not good at all. So onto the beef baguette that my partner ordered. Well I felt sorry for her as there were so many things wrong with this. The beef was dry.... well actually that 's an understatement. I would say that it had been cooked and then cooked again. You could tell that there was no love going into this meal. The salad was again very poor, I think they need to look at how they are storing the salad items to be honest. I had a sense that the food was dirty, I could be wrong but from the appearance, this is what sprung to mind. I really hope they were having an off day as we like supporting local places and would really want this to be good. The food we ordered isn 't difficult to do well, so I 'm sure that with a little love and attention they can sort this out. Unfortunately, we won 't be back in a rush to go back.

We both had a cheese and ham toasted sandwich. I know prices have gone up generally in cafes and restaurants but £8.95 for a toasted sandwich is expensive. There was thick sliced ham in the sandwich , not processed which was good , but minimal cheese and it was hardly toasted , nearly all bread. There was cheese on the top which was hot but the sandwich was only warm. Infact I really should have sent it back . Not impressed. 2 toasties and a regular cup of coffee , £20+

We reviewed the Topiary restaurant (within the garden centre) positively four years back. We have had many lunches here and are positive over quality, service and value for money. Today however was different. We have not had a breakfast before. Nothing wrong with price or service but the food was dreadful. We had three portions of toast and asked that two of them were without butter. Only one was. The topping on two of these were scrambled egg and bacon. The bacon was cold, hard, a fork was no use with it. The quantity across the two portions would have struggled to make a single slice. There was plenty of scrambled egg but it was all in bits and somewhere between barely aired and cold. It seemed that both the egg and bacon had been prepared much earlier in the morning and we were served what was left. There was no heat in the toast. It was certainly not prepared to order. On the positive side the poached eggs were done very nicely. No idea about the avocado as it had been smeared onto a slice of buttered toast so it wasn't touched. We won't be going back for a breakfast and I suspect it'll be some time before we venture back for lunch.

Use the toilets at your peril, dirty, shabby, rundown toilets and faeces on the tiles at the side of the toilet. Absolutely disgusting