Reviews Cafe At Rutland Nursery

First visit since the opening of the new restaurant and shops. They’ve still retained their nursery but extended the eating and shopping aspect of the garden centre. Commands great views over Rutland Water and with potential for large outdoor seating area at the moment closed off to the public.

Absolutely stunning. Beautiful shop, incredibly stylish and a fantastic array of plants. Had drinks and cakes in the cafe - such lovely staff and best brownie I’ve had! Highly recommended.

Recently renovated and expanded this is now a beautiful garden centre and cafe. Service was great, as was the coffee and cake as well as the usual selection of plants.

What an amazing breakfast we had Rutland Nursery's new restaurant. Wonderful service and food. Outstanding

Visited today and was very impressed. Large selection of plants at reasonable prices. We had a coffee and scones in the restaurant. The scones were freshly made and really nice. Coffee was hot and also very good. The staff in the restaurant and shop were all very friendly and helpful. We will definitely be coming back to try a breakfast or lunch.

In an area of the world that is already very well served by garden centres, Rutland Nursery is an outstanding addition. The car park is massive, and is covered with more stones that I have seen in one place since Brighton Beach. There are lots of disabled spaces near the front and a pick up point right by the exit which is very handy if you have bought something particularly heavy - of which there are MANY examples available. With the exception of power tools, you can get pretty much anything you could ever possibly want or need in your home & garden - and LOADS of other things you would never have thought of in a month of Sundays! As is essential at any self respecting Garden Centre these days - Rutland Nursery have not just got a little coffee shop or an afterthought of a catering operation - they have gone the Full Monty with their food & drinks section. They have put a LOT of thought (& a heck of a lot of money) into this part of their business, but BOY, has it been worth it!! I think it is comfortably the best food offering at a garden centre that I have ever come across - it’s just SUPERB!!! Firstly, it is HUGE - it must seat somewhere in the region of 140 people - and it regularly fills up! But, not to worry as they have a ‘hot-seat’ system where you are given an electronic queue placeholder, so you can go and have a look at the THOUSANDS of items they have on sale around the rest of the centre (including a quite frankly ridiculous number of urns!!), safe in the knowledge that your little gadget will alert you the moment your table is ready. I cannot overstate this - these guys have got this operation down to a tee!! If you’re in this business and want to know how it can - & should - be done, then treat yourself to a meal at this place and you should learn all you need to know as it’s not rocket science, but SO MANY get it SO WRONG. Right from the amazing view across Rutland Water, captured for almost every seat in the house to enjoy by the brilliantly designed ‘glass barn’ that’s the home to this gem, they really have put a lot of thought into every facet of this operation: STAFF - Lots if them & VERY WELL TRAINED. WAGES - They obviously don’t pay peanuts as they are blessed with a quality of staff much higher than most. This investment is easily made up in increased sales, encouraged by the KNOWLEDGABLE team who seem to be very well MOTIVATED. SPEED - Even when they are full to the brim, they keep the pace of your visit ticking along nicely, with hot food brought out very promptly, but always COOKED TO PERFECTION and VERY FRESH. The RANGE available is just PERFECT, in my humble opinion. Whether you’re just after a coffee & a cake(& it’s GREAT COFFEE, BTW - another part that SO many get wrong). These guys are properly trained baristas who give you a top quality drink - & keep up with the very high demand - without unnecessary delay. And as for the cake - OMG - where to start!!! AWESOME CAKE SELECTION, with clear signage - not some badly wiped bit of slate with a chalk scrawl that gets you a most disapproving frown if you dare to ask what it actually says!! Breakfast, Brunch, or Lunch, you CAN’T go wrong here - it’s BRILLIANT. And, as if that wasn’t all great enough - they’ve got their PRICING spot on too. It’s not the cheapest around (but this quality of food certainly should not be the cheapest) - but I would say it is fairly priced - and that keeps happy campers like me coming back for more & more - kerching to them!!!! They fully deserve all their success - and believe me, with the amount of business this place is doing, they are VERY successful, because they have stuck to their guns to keep the quality high and not crank the prices to silly levels (some garden centres seem to think that, because they’re a mile from town they can charge what they like for a poorly looking scone). The rest should watch & learn, or lose your trade.

The Nursery was great definitely returning. We went to the Cafe after where the service was terrible! I ordered a scone and never actually received it, got fed up of waiting so decided to leave!!!

Visited mainly to have a coffee in the new cafe. This is a large ,modern building overlooking rutland water. There are varied menus for different times of day with a fair number of choices and reasonable prices in todays climate . The garden centre currently has some good violas, which they grow themselves. A very upmarket shop with crockery, cushions, cards ,diffusers , snd children's gifts to name a few though some items very expensive.