Cafe Pine - Wealden

We called into Hilliers on Sunday 27th Oct 2019 to have a wander round and enjoy a pot of tea and cake for two. Imagine our disappointment to be told that although dogs are still allowed in the shop area they are NO longer allowed inside the Cafe. We could, however, sit outside! This is a new policy as we have enjoyed several visits with our dog. How short sighted and disappointing. Won’t be visiting again.

As we live locally we have visited Hillier's Pine Cafe many times but we do not like the new layout as much. The seating area now is more like a canteen with tables in rows. Also the seating area we liked the best with the plants round it is now much smaller and too near where the people who queue up for coffees, cakes, scones etc. The food is still good and we will still be coming but not so often. It's a shame as it had potential and more could have been made of it. Most of the staff are friendly and helpful.

We like the new cafe and have visited on many previous occasions. Even though the service is very slow we have always thought the coffee and food was worth waiting for, but not today. We were informed that they had 'run out ' of skimmed milk, so we had no choice but to leave without having coffee etc. Come on Hilliers get your act together, how can you run out of milk??

We arrived about 3:30 needing lunch, staff very helpful in finding us a lunch menu from which we both selected salads. One pork pie and one coronation chicken these arrived quickly and were of good quality ingredients. Very tasty.

Met up with a friend here for breakfast, arrived around 9.30, we both ordered the hilliers British breakfast, unfortunately it was nothing special, not freshly cooked, bacon was dried up, beans reheated and dry, most of it was cold, staff were friendly but for £10 you need to improve, I’ve been to other garden centres for breakfast and they were vastly superior to this, all freshly cooked, have given 3 stars for the staff and it was clean.