How disappointing is it...

We were sad to see our local and very good Thai restaurant disappear after many years. It was taken over by another Thai, which was almost as good but evidently didn't do very well and has now been taken over by a garish pizza place. There's another garish pizza place right next door! As if one wasn't enough...

My finding exactly Greyduster we have a large amount of eateries local to us since they have upgraded the local Prom area,all seem to be a much of a muchness and sell the same kind of food,all day breakfasts and large over the top burgers.We need to travel to Liverpool for the more selective menu's.

The eatery business is a fast changing one, and most new ones do not do very well and close after a while.They have to be very good to still be there years later.
Most of them change chefs regularly even if the business stays the same as well, so you can never be sure the food will be as good.

Q E had a fabulous gastro pub just up the road from us run by a lively French chap. The brewery put the rents up to such an extent that he and his family left. The people that have it now run it as a typical pub with a beer garden, pre cooked pub food, karaoke, huge TV - it's noisy but still not full. That truly was disappointing!

It is Coffee shops here, we do not have the big chains except at the Airport and Eurostar terminal and small restaurants seem to be morphing into Coffee shops very quickly.
A really nice very busy Thai resaurant seemed to change overnight last summer, same owners but now posh coffee.

It's easy to blame new owners for changing popular venues. However, a certain amount of disappointment must lie with those who sold the popular pub or eatery, took the money and ran off to the sun.

I knew a family who'd always wanted to own a pub/restaurant and finally got the opportunity, paid their money, redecorated and re-opened, only to find their two nearest rivals the same day started special offer meal prices for a MONTH. A compliment in a way that both venues feared the new competition, but it made for a very uncomfortable start for the new owners. Last I heard they were doing alright but that could so easily have ended before it began.

Sorry if that went a bit off topic

It is disappointing when the traditional pubs become fewer and fewer, but I think the gastro pub really enhances our eating-out experience. It's only the same as a French brasserie where you can get simple, quality food dressed up a bit. We have a brilliant selection of gastro pubs in East London, all thriving and very reasonably priced.
I agree that coffee shops are mushrooming up everywhere and sadly changing the character of towns and villages, while the food they offer is all much of a muchness and pretty tasteless.

Restaurants and pubs changing hands is often down to the lease holder, someone monstrous like Punch Taverns who are not restaurateurs or publicans but a property portfolio company. When someone takes over a run down pub and turns it into a successful and popular eaterie, Punch Taverns puts the rent up to impossible levels. They profit by others hard work. It is incredibly hard to make a decent living running a restaurant or coffee shop unless you are part of a massive chain.

We had a wonderful South African restaurant not too far from us which we loved visiting.
The food was amazing, the staff were lovely, and we had many happy family gatherings there over the years.
Last year the owner retired, the restaurant was sold and is now 'just another eatery'. The food is good, but very much the normal fare, steaks, burgers, fish etc.
Oh how I long for a big bowl of cape bobotie, chicken pot luck and a few slices of kudu and crocodile!

Here in this part of France we can still find individual good local restaurants but you do need to be careful as some of those 'buy in' meals. There is some notice they are supposed to display now if they are still cooking the food all from scratch.
A thing which seems to have taken off here over the last few years are Asian buffets places. Within a two or three mile stretch of road we suddenly have three. All are huge compared to normal sized restaurants. We have yet to try them as do not tend to go for buffet food but we are told they are very good.
We now have a mobile Indian takeaway which is good. It is run by a British couple who go to different places each evening. The place they come to near us is outside the cinema and they are there on the evening they show the English Language film early - you can order on the way in and collect it on the way home.

In the town, where we have our second home, all the traditional restaurants have closed and now the choice is pub bar meals, Indian food or pizzas.
Near my main home there is a hotel which was refurbished as a gastro-pub, DH and I visited but it was anything but a gastro-pub. The food was bog standard pie and chips and fish and chips but with a hefty price tag.

An ex colleague of DH's took over a nice pub in a suburb of the city that belonged to a chain, but they had a lot of autonomy over what food they served and much of it was home made and seasonal. Then the chain sold out to another chain and the menus came from head office and had to be adhered to. No specials. The food became rather boring bog standard pub food. We only ever call in there for a drink now, but don't eat. The people we knew who ran it got fed up and moved on.

That's right Welshwife there has been a proliferation of Asian buffets in the Limousin, I don't like the very large ones with machines for wine and coffee. Contrary to popular belief the food in french restaurants can be bad as well. Like most places it's trial and error .

Please what is meant by "high tea"?

I seem to recall that about 50 years ago we were on holiday in Scotland and had problem finding a B and B one evening. Eventually found one and the lady said she could just do us a "high tea". We expected sarnies etc but it came up a properly cooked hot meal.

One problem we have round here is that a pub/restaurant can be great and very popular, and then the chef leaves and moves to another one still in the same area - so it can be quite a surprise when you go back there and the food has changed completely. It becomes quite an art keeping up with where so-and-so has moved to now.

Good definition of high tea. www.afternoontea.co.uk/information/what-is-high-tea/

It's incredibly hard to run and sustain a food business for years. It's the norm to work 12-14 hour days, 6-7 days a week and that's just to get the food out there and keep the business ticking over. There's a whole fifth circle of hell awaiting when the doors close with stock ordering, staff rotas, deep cleans and hardest of all keeping up with VAT, business rates, enviromental health documentation and changing legislation etc etc.Personally speaking, i physically and mentally burnt out because it was just too much even though my place was really popular and always busy. It is an awful shame that great independent places don't last but it seems that it's the chains with large organisations behind them which can sustain and make a profit from food.

We have suffered the same in our (very prosperous) area of Buckinghamshire and there is little choice of restaurant or cafe except for chains or horrendously expensive one-offs.

Our solution at the weekend is to buy a bottle of cheap Champagne, a nice bottle of red and to cook and/or mix and match with high end supermarket food. No taxi fares, no service charges and tips but a lovely experience. We dress for dinner and lay the table beautifully. Top dinner!

(We don't drink a bottle of wine each, however, as my DH has vacuum wine keeper stoppers which work perfectly.)

I really wish we could get a major chain restaurant in this town to offer some competition the food standard in the pubs and coffee bars is not good but then I live in Pork Pie Town the height of gastronomic excellence - NOT!!!

Hi all the probelm is, its the sign if these very awful enomical times .In every high street around the country your see the same shops now.
Mostly charity shops, Pizza places, the odd cafe and cost cutters, cheap mini markets.Or asian run news agents.All the post offices are suddenly a grocery shop now and all.
Its because these are the sort of shops thst can survive as the demand for them is high VIS A VIV resteraunts.My eldest ds is a head chef of many years standing, and most of these little places, however well they seem to the customer, wont or cant afford to equipe the kitchen or chef to a proper standard .Ie ive lost count of the times my chef ds has told me abt how places he works in wont replace old broken or worn out equitment , putting him and his staff in danger and making his job impossible.
He has suffered electric shocks, terrble burns etc.So he leaves , and goes to a chain, as they can afford to be a bit better.But even chains can be the same. So like most chefs, he has to move jobs every few months.
In one place he worked in, unbenown to him, at the time a load of gansters were running it, to launder money!
.Most tanning salons and nail bars are opened, just for this purpose , and the general public hasnt got a clue.

I hope he told the trading standards people about the dangerous working conditions - they would be onto them like a ton of bricks. If he just left without mentioning it, it would be the same for the next employee.

cloverpark sounds like you were expecting "Afternoon Tea" which is sandwiches & cakes, usually dainty portions & if you're lucky "posh china". High Tea is always a cooked meal - not often seen these days but when I worked as a waitress in the early 1970s, the restaurant I worked in served both on a Sunday afternoon.

I am quite fortunate where I live in Devon as most pubs & cafes serve very good meals using local produce, the exceptions are the large chain "carverys" which can vary in quality from day to day, I prefer to pay a bit more for a better meal. It is sad to see many pubs & cafes being taken over & offering overpriced, bought in food

In the last couple of years we have had four teashops open in our town, three have survived offering homemade cake, light lunches and various teas and coffees, they have certainly given the coffee chain shops a run for their money and are full of pensioners and young mums.

Some of the best places to eat in France are the Les Routiers. They cater to workmen and truck drivers and are full of blue overalled workmen at lunch time.
There is usually a lively buzz and the food is invariably good and sometimes excellent and cooked on the premises.
When travelling back and forth between the UK and France I look out for them and sometimes we will make a special trip to a particularly good one.