Princely Pear Tea Room - Would The Prince Really Go?

Brian and I love the decor at the Princely Pear Tea Room in Cookstown Ontario... but the service and the food are not up to par.

Lunch was a Black Forest Ham Sandwhich with Garden Salad for Brian. I'll let him talk about that. My lunch was a Chicken Caesar Salad, one of my all-time favs in any restaurant.

I also ordered a cup of coffee with milk, not cream, and Brian ordered a pot of tea. Our server brought a teeny pitcher of milk, half full -- and 4 small containers of cream. I reminded her I wanted milk with my coffee. She looked bewildered and told me the milk was in the pitcher. Yes but there isn't enough of it for both of us....she never brought more and yes we did run out by the second cup, forcing me to have cream (yuk!) in my coffee. Never mind, the first cup was stone cold anyway... Strike 1 and 2

Okay the salad arrived after an eternity of waiting. Oh, and it is important to note that there was only one other couple in the whole tea room, with 2 servers. For some reason we could not get anyone's attention (hello, remember us over here in the corner??) and Brian's tea cup was filthy.... Strike 3

My salad had too much dressing which had not been properly mixed, so there were huge clumps of it here and there. The lettuce was a mixture of fresh and wilted old bits with dark green around the edges, giving it that just pulled from the toilet taste... Strike 4

I ate the chicken and left the lettuce but our server didn't think to ask why. I didn't volunteer any feedback, she obviously wasn't interested.

Next dessert - I have a lot of food allergies, have to be very careful so I am cautious and ask lots of questions before I order any item. I thought scones with whip cream and jam sounded good but a glance in the dessert display showed almond slivers on top. I asked our server if all their scones had nuts on top. "No" was her response, so I ordered non-nut scones. She started to leave, then stopped and said "well they do have almonds in them" Arrghh! "That would be nuts" I replied. Strike 4 1/2

I ended up with Blueberry Cheesecake which was delicious so the meal had a happy ending.

I rank this tea room 2 teacups out of 5