31 Castlegate Restaurant 31 Castlegate, York YO1 9RN

"Great muscles, decent roast, good service. If you feel inebriated walking out from your table it's not you it's the floors, adds to the charm though. Note I had eaten half the muscles by the time I took the photo."

"Amazing restaurant. Service super good nice & polite people. The food amazing, super tasty, super portions and razonable price for the amount. We ordered 3 sunday roasts and 1 duck. Also super nice dessert for my birthday. We will come back and recommend 100%"

"I'm rating this as 3 stars when the reality is that we had a 2 star experience but the staff were truly up against it with other members apparently not turning up for work on the day we visited and the drinks delivery not coming so there was basically nothing to drink. Ordinarily I think this would be a 4/5 experience but it wasn't for us. We booked well in advance as a party of 10+ and on arrival were surprised that the restaurant was near empty, at lunchtime, on a Sunday, in a prime spot, when York was heaving. No problem though, hopefully this would lead to fast service... it didn't. The poor waiting staff seemed like they were ready to just walk out, a simple request for water for the table to the young chap was met with a look that suggested I'd asked him to drain his body of all its blood and serve us that. The water never came despite three requests. Food service was incredibly slow to the point the kids were asking when it would be coming nearly an hour after ordering but when theirs arrived it was really impressive, it just took too long between starters and mains. On the adult side starters were excellent and presented really well but the Sunday lunch was a bit lacking, the meat was decent, the gravy good but the roast potatoes hard and dry, the carrots unappealing to look at but tasty and the plate just lacked "green" to balance things a bit. Other dishes on the table that weren't the Sunday lunch looked really good but were a little cold by all accounts. They ran out of beer, soft drinks, soda water and more yet we somehow still managed to have a table full of glassware to the point we moved it ourselves to make some room. It was a similar story with plates. Ordinarily I wouldnt have been happy and complained but the prices charged werent excessive and the starter made up for the disappointing main. We'd have ordered deserts but had been there so long that we just wanted to get out by that point. I suspect this experience isn't a reflection of how things normally are there and the many favourable reviews seem to confirm this but it was disappointing for us all the same. I hope they get their staffing issues sorted and manage to get to the point where the day is stress free enough to be able to give diners water when they can't serve any other drinks. This is the first time I've ever felt the need to ask the front of house staff if they're OK at a restaurant, I felt really sorry for them and we tipped accordingly when normally we'd have been asking for money off the bill."

"Excellent service. Lovely food and good value - had choices all from the set vegan menu and really appreciated the effort gone to keep these in line with the other menu. Also had a lovely mocktail and impressed with all the vegan desserts choices, will be coming back to try more!"

"Great food. Smoked salmon and pea risotto outstanding. Sea bass with crushed potatoes also a big hit. This is great food served by friendly staff. Would 100% go back."