The Orangery - Derbyshire Dales

Visited here last night for dinner. Worth noting we understand the last dinner reservation is 7.30pm as the kitchen usually closes at 9pm? Anyway this time worked for us. The restaurant wasn’t busy and is beautifully decorated. The food was fabulous and the staff are equally as wonderful. Nothing was too much trouble and the kitchen prepared a sauce for the steak which wasn’t even on the menu. Would highly recommend.

Visited one Saturday afternoon with a friend for afternoon tea. The Orangery is located in a historic building that’s beautiful inside out. The restaurant itself is lovely, great decor ambience. The staff were very friendly welcoming. Afternoon tea itself was lovely; delicious warm scones, tons of clotted cream and a tasty selection of deserts. All I would say is that 3 very small fingers sandwiches isn’t quite enough so the savoury side was lacking slightly. You do get a small slice of sausage roll though. For £44 for one tier, I’d expect a couple more sandwiches. Overall though, a very lovely place enjoyable afternoon tea.

Dear oh dear . Worst , most overdressed salad I have had in ages , totally overpowered by too much anchovy . My husband ate it but then he would eat anything as he was starving Lol. Dared to comment and a very sweet waitress offered to sort out a refund, however , both she and the equally pleasant receptionist were overruled by the overbearing and really un customer friendly restaurant manageress who barked at us ‘nothing wrong with it and just pay’ and then chased us to reception to interrupted a conversation, which was nothing to do with her at that point, in order to advise us that we should be grateful that she had ‘accommodated’ us in her empty restaurant in the first place without a booking. Hahaha. All very unprofessional and really Faulty Towers behaviour. Not the best way to represent an establishment. Maybe a bit more customer service training might help. Overall do yourself a favour and AVOID !! Average food at best it was virtually empty on a Saturday lunchtime which tells you everything you need to know , no atmosphere and an unpleasant experience. Oh and she insisted that the waitress had never said she would adjust the bill , although she certainly did. Maybe the sweet gurl changed her story under interrogation through fear? All very unsavoury.

One of our Christmas gifts was an afternoon tea here which we where all looking forward too. On arrival there is not a lot of parking for the restaurant seeing how big the place is so has to park on the side of the entrance road ….with the hope no big vehicles came in.. Entrance was lovely well decorated and asked at reception desk where we needed to go Sat down at a lovely table and tea coffee brought out then the afternoon tea I x celiac 2 x vegetarian Now the afternoon tea was lovely but No teaspoons on the cups and saucers ..had to ask No spoons to eat shot glass with fruit and cream Sandwiches lovely nice fillings Cakes on the gluten free stand …awful dry and could not eat Service was the worse bit of the hole experience Had to ask for refill on tea and coffee No one came to ask if everything was ok Had to ask for cream for the scone on gluten free All staff seamed to be moving around not doing very much and avoiding tables as much as possible …nothing cleared when empty Food good Service not so great

Where do I start! My husband and I were looking forward to afternoon tea at the Orangery restaurant, after perusing the menu online beforehand it sounded quite nice. When we arrived we were greeted and shown to our table, the place was almost empty, with only one more couple there. We were asked if we’d like tea or coffee, this came out after 5 minutes. The wobbly cake stand with the very sparse amount of sandwiches and selection of cakes came out much later and our teapot was nice and empty by this time! We weren’t offered a refill and tried in vain to get the attention of the waitress who was extremely busy chatting to the other couple about house prices for about 10 minutes. She noticed my husband waving his arms in desperation to get her attention and completely ignored him 4 times! Eventually she managed to fetch us another pot then took the rest of our milk away whilst she refilled it in the kitchen. I thought we were going to die of thirst! The sandwiches we received were not the ones advertised online. We were given plain ham, cheese and pickle, egg mayonnaise and salmon. Where were the watercress, horseradish, cress etc and the coronation chicken? 4 small fingers of basic sandwiches each…. Not enough and I could have made these at home! The scones weren’t warmed and the cakes bore no resemblance to the menu whatsoever! Where were the mango tarts, Victoria sandwiches, pistachio macarons? We received, very dry coffee and lemon cake, chocolate cake and chocolate macaron. Not very inspiring at all for the hefty £21.95 per head price tag! We couldn’t eat a lot of it as it was that rubbish! We did think we might get chance to take the rest home for the kids, but after waiting another 15 minutes to get any attention we gave up and left. As we stepped out of the door the waitress shouted across the room to us to see if we wanted to take the rest home. We said we would have if she had bothered to ask us 15 minutes earlier. Overall a dreadful experience, zero customer service, very inattentive staff, please don’t waste your hard earned cash on this place. Whilst we were there we looked at reviews on trip advisor and see that many people have complained. Short replies have been added by the Orangery saying that they have taken note of the comments, yet absolutely nothing has been done about any of it! We won’t be returning!