The White Pyramid (Restaurants in Cornwall in general)

Member Name: deadringer

Product:	Restaurants in Cornwall in general
Date:	08/08/05 (638 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: none really

Disadvantages: Difficult to find. Not family friendly. No atmosphere. Rude staff. Poor Service.

We decided to eat at The 'White Pyramid' based on the previous review, and because the place was on a recommended list of pubs given to us by the farmer whose campsite we were staying at.

We were bitterly disappointed. Maybe it has changed management? I don't know, but I certainly would not recommend the place any more.

Firstly it took quite a long time to find, because its name has changed to 'The Bell' - we found this out at the local shop in Trewoon.

We arrived during a wet evening (during the height of the tourist season in the 1st week in August), when most other pubs/restaurants were quite busy, to find the place pretty dead. There were some men dressed in orange overalls/flourescent jackets drinking in the bar adjacent to the family area. They were swearing!

The waitress was extremely young (13 to 14 years old would be my guess), and struggled with our order. It took several attempts to find items in the menu that weren't 'off' :-(

There were seven of us altogether, 3 adults, 2 teenagers, and 2 children.
When we finally managed to order something that was available, two of us ordered the 'curry'. The waitress informed us that it was a mild 'lamb' curry.

All the food seemed reasonable, apart from the lamb curry, which arrived without any lamb in it :-(

We pointed this out to the landlady, who asked us to bring the curries back.
The young waitress then returned to say the chef didn't know what curry he had cooked, that it wasn't lamb curry, but something else (we never did find out what it was supposed to be). I asked the waitress if the chef could just fry up some beef, and add it to the curries (beaf steak was on the menu) - this seemed to me to be a prefectly reasonable request. The waitress said she'd find out, then disappeared.

After half an hour (when the rest of the party had all finished their meals) I found the landlady, and asked if any progress had been made on the curries. She was very abrupt, and claimed the girl (the waitress) had said we didn't want a replacement meal (hmmmm - so two of us came into a restaurant hungry, had now changed our minds?). They hadn't done anything to try and find us a suitable replacement meal.

I was somewhat taken aback at the lack of any apology, and complete lack of effort to try and service our order, so went back to find out what my fellow curry fan wanted to do (at this point I no longer wanted to give the restaurant my personal custom, and wanted to find a simple takeaway to eat elsewhere).

The other members of the party suggested I complain about the service...
I told the landlady I wasn't very happy about the way our order had been dealt with, at which point she started raising her voice, and blaming the waitress for the problem. When I pointed out that the 'waitress' was only a very young girl, and that really the landlady should be taking responsibility for running the restaurant, she swore at me (in front of my kids!!!!!), and demanded that the party leave her pub!

Of course she also insisted that we pay for the meals that they had managed to deliver, which I did (I only wish I had demanded a refund for the £4 I had put into the jukebox whilst waiting for my non-existant curry).

All in all an extraordinary, and very unwelcome experience.

Two things would have completely resurrected the initial problem with the curries in my eyes (a) an instant apology, and (b) some effort to follow up on my suggestion to just add some beef to the curry. I would then have gone away full, and not wishing to provide feedback like this :-(

Summary: This place fell well below my expectations.