I stupidly imagined that Ally Pally garden centre would be a nice place for my birthday lunch! Oh how wrong I was! The garden centre itself is grubby, on its last legs, with a very poor variety of over-priced gifts and the plants we did see were way over-priced too.
I called months ago asking if they had disabled access & was told "oh yes, we have a ramp to the cafe. No problems for wheelchairs".
What they didn't tell me was that, on entering the garden centre, the steps to the cafe are right there but my wheelchair and I, and my 90 year old disabled dad, had to go right around the garden centre to reach the ramp - a very inaccessible garden centre with very narrow gaps between displays. The ramp had things on the floor on both sides all the way up it - thoughtless and unhelpful.
Then we see what a dump the cafe is! But we were all exhausted and hungry, and had trekked around the place to get there so we decided to stay.
The cafe has no moveable menus so my carer was told to bring the 4 large plastic display stands from around the checkout to show me what was available! We placed our order, sat and waited. And waited....
I quickly started to feel ill, as did my friend, because somebody with very little common sense had put the stinkiest flowers - lilies, complete with staining stamen - on every table. We had to move all the lilies from near us but put up with the smell because we were starving & we'd already paid for our meal.
Seriously, who puts stinky lilies where people are eating?! When our food did eventually come, every mouthful tasted of that awful smell.
The food didn't arrive - half an hour after ordering, my carer goes to ask how long it will be. "Oh, I forgot!" said the server! He had full view of us, could see we were sitting there with no food, yet he forgot that we'd paid for food!
As "compensation", he gave my carer two cakes - even though there were four of us. No extra tea or coffee to go with the cakes or to keep us going until we finally got our food.
When we did eventually get our food, it came with flies. My friend's toasted tea cake was cold and barely toasted and my tuna melt tasted like the tuna mix was days old.
For this pleasure, we paid over £20. And I remind you - this was my birthday! Incredibly disappointing. read more