White Peaks Cafe Closed

Monsoon rains drove me to lunch at Kew gardens. Very pleasantly surprised by range and quality of food available here. Today's fish stew was really tasty.. a bit of a shock to find plastic cutlery in a place I'd expect to be leading the way on reducing plastic use. If you can get past that faux pas a very good lunch

The food is terrible and price's a bloody disgrace. I would suggest you take a lunch box to Kew rather than eat Their slop.

I’ve eaten at White Peaks three times in the last year or so, simply because the old lady I accompany to Kew Gardens seems to like it. On each visit I made the mistake of choosing a hot meal. It never fails to disappoint. The worst was Tandoori Chicken (July 2018 which was undercooked and so tough that I left most of it. The vegetables were severely undercooked as well (even for someone who normally likes her veg ‘al dente’ .

I live really close to the gardens and visit often with my four year old. Maybe one visit in five I will give her hot food in the cafe instead of bringing a packed lunch. The food has always been mediocre at best and luke warm and overpriced but I was unaware there had recently been a big change to the menu. Now no vegetables are included unless you pay separately for them. So one sausage and some cold chips was £6 and if I added over cooked cold broccoli it was almost £10. I asked them as I had many times before if I could have a smaller amount of chips and some broccoli but the answer was absolutely not. I saw the manager who said it wasn’t her decision so I saw the chef. He was very polite but explained it was a new policy and he had to stick to it from head office . So in this day and age head office don’t think Kids need vegetables ? He did in the end give in to me but only because I was so insistent and he really didn’t want to do it as it was clear he wasn’t supposed to. In the end I felt bad for asking as it clearly was out of their hands. Come on Kew Gardens we know we are being fleeced when we eat there but if the food is edible and a decent enough meal we can take it on the chin. The food was really poor standard and I wished I had brought a packed lunch as usual.

On a hot day I really didn't anything more than my picnic and an icecream but the range of food available looked quite good. The icecream had an interesting range of handmade flavours and at £2.80 a cone was not too rediculous a price and the blackcurrant and clotted cream was delicious. There are also toilets and a drinking fountain here.