Reviews in County Durham

Love this place!! Excellent value for money. Amazing food. Warm and cozy. Staff go above and beyond to help you.

17th Feb, ‘23 After booking lunch at this hotel (a week prior) as a stop-off point on the way to the Lake District, we found ourselves on the day of travel, stuck in traffic. Realising that we would be late for our 1.30pm appointment we decided to ring the hotel to ask if we could push our booking on until 2pm. Our first unanswered call at 1.18pm was followed by a further nine (9) unsuccessful attempts every few minutes or so (& each time ending up on answer-phone machine) until finally at 1.42pm (24mins later & already 12mins late for our lunch appointment) the telephone was actually answered! Hooray! I explained the situation & that we had actually been trying to call for the last near on 25mins expecting the young man to give some explanation as to why they hadn’t picked up, but no! After asking if possible to push our lunch appointment on 30mins he said he would find out & call me back, & to be fair he did, & confirmed that it would be fine. We arrived a bit fraught after our journey, & we’re really looking forward to a nice relaxing lunch. On entering reception we gave our booking name to the girl behind the desk & again explained why we were late & that we had tried to call many times but with no answer until the young man (also now sat behind the counter) had answered our call. Again no explanation as to why the telephone remained unanswered. I must also point out here that when you call the given number (01833 627232) you are greeted with four options - press 1, 2, 3 or hold for reception. We tried every option at least twice and they all ended up with the exact same message asking to ‘leave a message’ as they were busy! Busy doing what? All departments were busy!! There were 2 people in the restaurant & maybe 5 in the bar/Bistro. We did also leave a message somewhere amongst all those calls, but no return call. The young lady checked our booking and led us to the Dickens Bistro which looked a little less inviting in real life & as I’d noticed 2 people eating in the restaurant (Gilroys) to the right as we entered the hotel, asked if it was ok to eat in there instead. She replied yes, so we made our way back through the reception and waited (as the sign said) to be seated. She never returned, so after 3-4mins we went in & sat down. After a further 5mins of being ignored by the reception staff & what looked like a manager passing through the room, I said to my wife that if we were not acknowledged in the next few moments I was going to get up & leave. My wife went off to the toilet & returning some 3-4mins later, we were still waiting for someone to speak to us. Nothing, not a ‘we’ll be with you in a minute’ or anything. We stood up, put on our jackets and left via reception without being spoken to. I was so annoyed that we had tried our best to do the decent thing and let them know in advance & due to their lack of professionalism our lunch reservation had been completely ruined. I never write restaurant reviews & we eat out a great deal, but I feel this place really needs sorting out by someone higher up the ladder, unless of course they are the same! PS. We also today received an email asking if we’d enjoyed our meal!

Excellent food, brilliant service and tremendous value. Have visited numerous times, and there has definitely been a step up with the service levels.

Absolutely fantastic meal, we went for the 3 course happy hour menu and it was all absolutely delicious and brilliant value! Fantastic service and lovely ambience in the restaurant, we will definitely be returning.

We really enjoyed our meal in the Antler bar. Food was lovely and had big portions! Service was great, very friendly staff. Thanks.

This is a beautiful restaurant in lovely surroundings. The staff are very attentive and the food is just amazing. We can't wait to visit again in the near future.

The restaurant is very nice the food was good but the portion of the sea bass was really small with just a few potato and a couple of tomatoes not good value the sweets were ok but again very small portions fir the money

Lovely atmosphere; gorgeous food, decent portion sizes and great price! Highly recommend

From the moment we came in we were welcomed the staff were lovely and the food was delicious the dining area was very pleasant and the fire was fab gad our last drink sitting next to the fire x

We had a lovely time celebrating my Mam's 89th birthday. Good food, helpful friendly staff. Would highly recommend

We had a very pleasant stay at Hall Garth Hotel staff we very friendly and helpful Could review and give more variety on menu for lunch and dinner breakfast was fine Leisure facilities are good

Always fab food. Even when the limited covid menu was on. Last visit was 14.02.23 and the best yet! We always seem to get the small 2 tables in the back room though and end up chair wars with those behind, but can over look that for the fab service!

Always fab food. Even when the limited covid menu was on. Last visit was 14.02.23 and the best yet! We always seem to get the small 2 tables in the back room though and end up chair wars with those behind, but can over look that for the fab service!

This was my second visit to Gussto. I chanced upon the restaurant a couple of years ago when visiting Durham with my daughter and the food we were served was so good that we were determined to visit again with the whole family. This we did last week and I have to say we were not disappointed. The restaurant looks very unassuming from the outside: a small door next to a broken window and dim lighting but once you enter you are transported to a world of gastronomic delight. The five of us ordered a selection of 12 tapas dishes between us, sampling meat, seafood, vegetables and of course bread and olives. The service was quick and efficient, the dishes all arrived together on a huge tray and every single one of them was excellent. I would particularly recommend the crispy pork belly bites - exquisite. The only small disappointment was the small range of desserts available but, to be honest, none of us really had room for dessert anyway. Safe to say, we will be coming again on our next visit to Durham.

We had evening meal, breakfast and afternoon tea and all were delicious. Great service, staff are all very attentive and friendly. Lovely hotel, thoroughly enjoyed our stay.

Lovely meal. Very swift , polite and efficient service. We should have had a bottle of wine in our room as part of the deal- this was rectified instantly. Slow cooked beef was very tasty as was the risotto. Nice ambiance in the restaurant. Thoroughly recommend both the restaurant and the hotel.

Another great meal at the Farmhouse with great service.

Beautiful meal *****5 star service. Definitely recommend for a lovely date night, lovely authentic atmosphere and great food.