I am going to start with the positives at the Kibworth House Hotel, located between Lutterworth in Leicestershire and Market Harbourgh as it’s usually a bad sign when you arrive for lunch at a hotel, not just a restaurant, a hotel and there’s not a single person in the dining room except you.

It is also the site of the Kibworth House theatre, a small theatre, a wonderful unique outdoor theatre experience in Leicestershire.

We’d been interested to try the hotel for lunch after going to see Singin In the Rain there and having a really good night.

First of all it has to be said when you are shown into The Orangery Restaurant, a massive stunning wrought iron Victorian conservatory it was really impressive and if it was full of lunch guests enjoying fabulous food it would have been magnificent.

Sadly the building was the only thing awe inspiring, although the branded bottles of distilled water that came to the table when we sat down was a nice touch.

The wine we ordered a bottle of white arrived not chilled and without an ice bucket. The wine waiter didn’t seem to understand the issue so we quickly changed our minds and opted for red wine by the glass instead.

We were already off to not the best start.

The food was quite nice, we had soup and a duck mousse to start both homemade followed by a salmon dish and a pea and shallot ravioli pasta dish, a quinoa salad with roasted vegetables, and a British beef pie at £18 we were told was a house speciality.

The menu is quite sophisticated, the starters priced around £10 the main courses around £20 so you are looking at £150 plus for 4 people without wine and although the food was perfectly fine you definitely need more than a beautiful historic venue to make spending that much money worth it and to have a good experience.

The waiter who served us was new and bless them even though they were chatty and very pleasant they spent more time telling us their life story than actually getting on with the job in hand.

In the end we just decided to chalk it up to experience and never return, putting this place down to a hotel with so much potential but clearly in a tough market was struggling to get anything going, perhaps more focused on a great wedding venue at the weekends than anything else.

After our experience I did try to speak to the hotel manager and after we were told they weren’t available by a sulky person with attitude on reception, found out who ran things. I discovered the hotel is privately owned and wrote a detailed email of our experience and everything that had happened, not to complain as such but to give our feedback and suggest what happened to us was maybe the reason they didn’t have any customers.

It fell on deaf ears. I didn’t even get a reply.

So to sum up.

The Orangery restaurant is an absolutely beautiful Victorian conservatory. The food OK sounds fancier on the menu than in reality though. The service, a calamity but we felt sorry for the waiter who was very eager but had no experience. And a wine waiter who was completely clueless.

To top it all off senior management and an owner who is clearly detached.