Scampston Walled Garden - Ryedale

We had a wonderful lunch at this restaurant. We enjoyed the Gardener's Platter which included cheese, ham, pork pie, sausage roll, apple and tomato slices, along with relishes and a side of sliced ciabatta. Everything was very fresh and tasty.

Unless you have a compelling reason to visit the beautiful gardens of the Scampston Estate, just a mile or two east of Malton off the A64, forget rounding off the experience with lunch or a snack at the Café. The Café itself doesn 't disappoint, but the quality of the food offer and value for money are simply out of touch with reality. On this occasion, we were told that there were staff shortages and so a limited menu was in place; they had ample opportunity to put alternative measures in place but still couldn 't meet the demands of properly servicing the establishment on the Sunday over the bank holiday, the last in May, and potentially one of the busiest long spring weekends before half-term. The so called 'sandwiches ', consisted of a huge uninspiring bread bap with filling, served with a few crisps, a small mixed salad and some coleslaw. My partner played safe and opted instead for quite the smallest square of chocolate brownie I have seen, and whilst tasty, it clocked up £4.25. Overcome by what I can only describe as menu puff beyond words, I decided on the scotch egg, once again served with the obligatory crisps, salad leaves and a spoon of coleslaw. The scotch egg itself was very overly chilled in a 'cold ' sense, unfortunately masking the flavour of what was a reasonable product, although falling considerably short of the menu description. The few 'crisp ' salad leaves were anything but crisp, limp and virtually tasteless, and with no salad dressing, and none offered. The maker of the coleslaw needs a few short lessons on how to put together a delicious slaw side. The table opposite opted for the 'tiny ' pork pie variant with the very same production line accompaniments; let 's just say it made the scotch egg look like a positively good choice. All of that could be forgiven of course, if it were not for the fact that the scotch egg and pork pie plates cost an unsuspecting diner a lofty £8.95 per plate. Another diner adjacent to us made a complaint about their sandwich. When challenged about the situation, the assistant said they had known about these shortages for a whole week before. I asked about straight forward value for money, and received a crisp reply that she together with the Café Manager made up the prices, and they had to make a profit. Yes, of course you do, but the Café Manager is clearly getting some of the basics skewed, and surprise surprise, the Manager was nowhere to be seen. Come on Scampston Café, you 've a super facility in the grounds of one of the great houses of North Yorkshire, get a grip. If you want to experience great quality, flair and fair value for money, go to Sledmere House Café instead, or one of Castle Howard 's eateries.

The gardens are so lovely but the cafe is rubbish if you 've got kids and you want more than cake. The kids lunch bag included a babybel, pombears and some raisin which is all OK but the sandwich was ridiculous a big floury roll with really thick hand cut ham in it. There is absolutely no way my 2 year old would eat that and when I requested sliced bread instead they said they didn 't have any. I question how many children would be happy to eat very thick cut ham in a floury bun. Would have been nice to have a piece of fruit in there too. My 'panini ' was a very dry toasted ciabatta roll with a lot of cheese, a few whole sundried tomatoes and a few basil leaves I don 't often leave lunch in a cafe as its a lot of money to eat out but I left most of it. I could go on but I won 't. Visit for the garden and get a drink and a cake but I 'd bring a picnic if I were you

We called in for our morning coffee break before looking around the garden. The scones we had were good, as were the drinks. It was probably the most we'd paid for a coffee break. It is classy, service is good I suppose that's what you're paying those prices for.

Would have liked to have had experience of dinning there but unfortunately not much on offer for gluten free so ended up with a pot of tea and a brownie, standard fair for anyone G.F.