City Gate Dining - Exeter

Great Sunday lunch when visiting our son at university. Lovely environment, good location and fab food.

An excellent Sunday roast, supplemented by good service. The restaurant is spacious yet welcoming.

We reserved a table on the City Gate website for six people to meet for drinks on an evening before Christmas. This process was very easy to do on line. Confirmation and reminders were emailed to me before my visit which was reassuring. When we arrived the staff were very helpful in letting us have a choice of seating. The bar staff were friendly and welcoming. There was a good selection of real ales including several draught Christmas ales. We had some bowls of chips as a snack and these are well worth trying. Some of the best the I have tasted!

Rip off! £40 a head food was over an hour late for the first course and then took 45 60 for the next course to come out when we had finished. I wrote that I had allergies when booking however this wasn’t adhered to and I was given food that would have given me a reaction had I not checked it through. I was then only given one option as an alternative. The turkey was incredibly dry, we were given two potatoes, one stuffing ball and one parsnip with a tiny bit of swede each. The dessert was tasty however absolutely tiny! Was maybe the width of two fingers and ten centimetres long when you think that it cost the equivalent of £13 a course it was definitely not worth it. We were offered a free drink as an apology for the wait which then took over an hour to get! Genuinely don’t waste your time for a big event.

Nice venue, however the service was incredibly slow considering we all prepaid £40 for three course. The starters were an hour and a half late. The communication via emails was also poor and the staff had no access to amend any orders, had to be from the manager only, who seemed to never be present.