The Thorn Tree Inn - Amber Valley

I have to say I wasn’t overly blown away by the food we received when we visited. The pizza base felt shop brought and wasn’t overly nice, my partners mushy peas was stone cold! We was the only ones in there at the time and staff seemed to be short. When paying we wasn’t asked if everything was ok until after we had paid, once asked I explained it wasn’t as good as I would have expected and no response given. Wouldn’t personally return however that’s from my experience.

We booked a table for 4 people (at 1pm) for Thursday 29th December. I have to admit, apart from the fish on the plates, (chips weren’t good) it must have been our worst experience at The Thorn Tree. I don’t know if you have a new owner/manager or staff but none of the “happy staff” that we have been used to we’re working yesterday. There was one young man that from what we could see, was only just managing to cope. He was literally running the bar/orders/seeting and serving single handed. This guy was doing great, to say that he had no help on the outside of the kitchen. The chips were certainly the worst we have ever been served. Lots of tiny pointed chips and quite a few chips were green fleshed. We would usually have stayed for desserts but the whole restaurant was “uncomfortably cold”. We understand that heating and energy prices have increased dramatically but myself and many others, are not prepared to pay good money, to sit and eat/drink in an uncomfortably cold restaurant. I would have certainly left this review on TripAdvisor but I have been told in the past “our TripAdvisor account has been compromised by a former employee”. So I’m not sure that there is much point, apart from sharing my opinions with others. In the past, I have always recommended and highly rated The Thorn Tree but no more

Good service and food. Nice to get together with family and friends. Will call again for sure. Hope sooner rather than later.

On arriving it was a very cold night. We expected a lovely fire lit and at least warm. How wrong we were !! We all ended up wearing our thick winter coats and scarfs while eating our meal which I must add was very salty. We then had a hot drink and hot pudding to try and thaw ourselves out. Which didn’t work. We had just finished it when a waiter came over to us and asked us if we would mind leaving as they have under 18 working there. We arrived at 7pm and left at 9:30 pm. We didn’t except to be asked to leave and if we had have known about the heating situation we would never have booked. But they were very happy to take our money surprise surprise

This is definitely work in progress. Good points. Fish and chips and pea fritters good. Server young and personable Areas for development. Cold temperature in the restaurant, no atmosphere as such, some light background music would have been better, mushy peas cold. Finally don't start a restaurant deep clean before the end of service.