Tottington Manor Hotel

Wonderful food, tasty, beautifully presented, simple ingredients well cooked using local produce- my absolute favourite. We took my parents for their birthdays and had the best experience. Mollie, our waitress/head honcho/actor in her other life, was excellent in every way. Attentive, friendly, personable, a delight. She did fail to spontaneously burst into song for our benefit but we won't deduct points for that omission! Two unexpected nice touches..a glass of Nozecco (the parents don't drink) AND a mini birthday cake for each of them! I would have liked to thank the kitchen team and Head Chef personally. We eat out a lot and are mostly underwhelmed and overcharged. It's a joy to dine here:) Well done owners and the whole team! We will be back and recommend you.

We visited this restaurant with friends. I'm an avid Malbec lover but to be honest the bottle we ordered wasn't fantastic but reasonably priced as far as restaurant prices go. The starter was not fantastic either to be honest, I'm trying to find something positive to say about it. I had the beetroot and goats cheese salad. There were very few pieces of beetroot and three or four whipped, piped blobs of goats cheese and some tapenade which I couldn't even taste. My main was the seafood board which on the menu sounded delicious and quite huge but in reality was very disappointing. The seafood stew literally contained about three muscles in their shells a couple of clams and a couple of bits of chorizo, but no other fish that I could find and was served in a tiny bowl with no finger bowl or anywhere to put empty shells. There were two King prawns with their shells on which were lovely, a piece of sourdough which looks like the pre-sliced stuff you can get from the supermarket and some chunky chips which again were tasteless. The tempura hake was not what I would call tempura. It was thick and greasy, I could've rung it out to be honest! So I took the fish out of the batter and ate that. It just was very average to be honest, bland in taste uninspiring in presentation. I didn't bother with dessert and was pleased I didn't as two of our friends did and they just didn't look appetising at all. Even the coffee wasn't good. It's a shame because on paper the menu reads well. The staff were perfectly pleasant, but one of them clearly didn't even know which meat one of our friends had ordered when she delivered it to the table, they need a little more training.

We had the afternoon tea in the Olive lounge, which was really pleasant and we enjoyed having the option to try various teas. The staff were lovely and a big highlight to the experience. Will definitely aim to come back to try the Sunday lunch! Also, thanks for holding on to the items I left behind, which I amazingly did twice :()

Plenty of parking, warm welcome and from that high it was downhill all the way. Seduced by the Olive Lounge for our lunchtime dining experience, imagine our surprise when we are greeted by 4 x 2-seater sofas crammed into a room plus four chairs and two diners. Our sofa had lost most of its stuffing so it was like sitting on the oversized coffee table that held us captive on said uncomfortable sofa. I ordered a glass of Ridgeview Bloomsbury (very nice) whilst the other half went for low alcohol beer which the server kindly pointed out was very low alcohol and NOT no alcohol. We also ordered bread and olives. The focaccia was ok, the three types of butter were ok although some balsamic and oil would have been fine too. The olives were mediocre and overly presented in this two bowl server yet not a cocktail stick to be seen. It meant messy fingers! I ordered the Sussex charcuterie board which for £20 would have been passable except for the limp rocket and the sad celery. The scone was delicious and the sausage roll a treat just far too tiny. Imagine an attempt at an upmarket ploughman’s. He had the seafood board which looked tastier. The flies were the big issue and I found the whole experience challenging batting them away. The ladies loo had issues with broken door locks, unmarked washing options and had an overall feeling of being unkempt. Overall nothing had surpassed expectations and to be presented for a of £92 just about topped off our uninspiring visit. There was no amazing food, no views of the Downs to knock your socks off and no superlative comfort.

We only stayed one night at Tottington Manor. Check-in was super friendly and our room was large, vintage style, with a four poster bed and a beautiful view of the hillside. We were shown the enormous jacuzzi in the bathroom, but sadly it took up most of the space and you had to climb in over the high sides and stand in it to have a shower. There was no window so it felt very stifling. We only had warm water too (both days), and that took an age to run so we didn’t try the jacuzzi in the end. Dinner and breakfast were both very nice and catered for my gluten intolerance with no issues at all. Service was a little slow at both sittings and although the staff are all lovely, they lacked the finesse you would expect from a 4* hotel. The bed was very comfortable, but the noise from the bar directly below kept me awake, I honestly thought they were knocking a wall down at one point! There was also only a coffee maker in the room - you had to ask for tea bags, which seems a little off when us Brits love our tea! All in all it was a pleasant enough stay, but pleasant isn’t really enough when you are paying decent money for food, drink and an overnight stay.

We have just returned from our 30th anniversary lunch where we had wonderful food on the outside of Terra restaurant. Francesca looked after us and she has the most outstanding customer service either of us have seen in many years. Francesca you are an absolute credit to the hospitality trade, it is so rare to see someone with such natural skills. And thank you to all the team, you really made our day special. Jon and Lynn.