Kemble - a great lunch destination?

[Hairyplane]

If you had asked me shortly after the AV8 Restaurant opened, my response would have been, 'probably one of the best fly-out destinations in the UK. At last, somebody has invested big bucks in a proper aerodrome restaurant, one where you could take anybody and be proud to.'

Now?

Aaaaaaargh!

The lovely Nicky and I flew in yesterday and walked into utter chaos.

We were no 3 in the queue, the 2 in front were complainers.

The tables were uncleared, the toilets? Ugh!

Service? A joke! I mean really! If it hadn't been done before (Fawlty Towers, why so few episodes?), they could have based a really good comedy on it.

The waitress/ barmaid lost all control of the situation when impatient customers walked behind the bar to pour their own pints!

We waited 45 minutes for 2 sandwiches and a jacket potato. Meanwhile, the poor foreign lass kept bringing out food only to be told, 'they've gone'.

Kemble, please close the place down, clean it up, man it with sufficient properly trained people who can speak English and generally...well... put it back to how it was when it was built. Don't reopen it until you have addressed these fundamental problems.

It used to be wonderful! The toilets were better than you would find in good hotels - the service was spot on, even on busy days (which yesterday wasn't).

In the meantime guys, avoid it like the plague - unless of course you want a bit of entertainment and dont mind waiting because actually, the food wasn't at all bad. Don't be too confident in getting what you ordered though!

Hows Compton Abbas these days? CA and Leicester take some beating.

Hairyplane.

[BEagle]

Hmmm...

Their webite doesn't even have a menu - it just makes vague statements such as "Our acclaimed Chefs have established the reputation of AV8 Bistro & Restaurant for excellent food, all at affordable prices." and "Using only the freshest of local Cotswolds produce, our Chefs have devised an imaginative menu which changes daily, featuring tempting special dishes and home made pizzas cooked in a stone base oven. A traditional Sunday Roast is available and the carefully selected and varied wine list complements the menu."

Which means nothing. So what exactly do they serve? And did you complain to anyone, Hairyplane?

It strikes me that, knowing the Ppopularity of PPRuNe, whoever runs the AV8 had better answer your complaints pretty quickly before the rumour mill gets going!

[cblinton@blueyonder.]

The only good meals we have there are the Breakfasts, tried a Sunday roast beef once and got cold beef and vegetables covered in a thick chocolate sauce type gravy. Terrible

It is a shame as the venue is great.
Do something about it as its really getting a bad reputation and not only on this forum

[Timothy]

To be fair, AV8 is very variable in both food (quality and temperature) and service (timeliness and pleasantness). I have known it vary from excellent to truly execrable.

The problem is the lack of consistency. I am not prepared to pay nigh on £400 to risk the possibility of an unpleasant experience.

I will wait until I hear either on here or the Flyer Forum that things have got consistently better before I go again.

Hey for Old Buck!

[cblinton@blueyonder.]

Timothy

Your used to that good KIWI fodder now

[BEagle]

"The only good meals we have there are the Breakfasts...." So I guess that is's become a Greasy Spoon with posh seats then, has it?

What went wrong? It was supposed to be somewhere rather classier than that.

To think that we nearly booked 45 people in for our club Winter Dinner.... By the sound of it, I'm glad we didn't!

[Monocock]

I always tend to find about 7 firemen standing around drinking cappucinos staring at people as they arrive. It can be very off-putting especially for women (my wife told me).

I once went there for lunch and waited 50 minutes for a sandwich. I too left even though I had paid up already.

Sad really.

[dy1]

KEMBLE AV8

From Airfield Manager, Kemble

I have just sent e-mail to a group who are not visiting us today for the Fly In because of yesterday's bad report about AV8 on Friday - did not like it, but totally justified and my most sincere apologies to everyone.

Yesterday, Saturday, we had a great day given the weather, with six staff in AV8 and everything under control.

TODAY we also have six staff in, three in the kitchen and three out front. WE have one side of the restaurant booked for 33 people and have stopped taking bookings to keep the other side free on a first come first served basis for visiting pilots and their friends.

We have two fully qualified FISO's in the Tower as usual and volunteers from the Cotswold Aviation Preservation Group here to help with fuel and marshalling. I hope it turns out to be fun for everyone - wherever they are flying.

It is worth keeping in mind that Kemble is such a popular place for Sunday lunch now that it is worth booking early.

Friday was an unmitigated disaster and there will be follow up action taken this week. This must not happen ever again will be my main message. There were sort of excuses, none acceptable. I admit there have been problems over the last two months at least and measures have already been taken to change matters. Staff did an amazing job over Christmas, especially with the evening Christmas parties but there were several days when the delay in service was bad and this is not tolerable. We have to aim for 100%.

I have great hopes for Kemble this year and as soon as we have the web site back in house, probably by end of next week, or very soon after, there should be better information available. We would like to get out web site as good as Barton's !

Landing fees this year are cheaper than last year and free for pre 1946 vintage and I hope this will increase the activity and the Kemble "buzz"

Thanks to all for support and patience - we look forward to seeing you.

David Young
Airfield Manager

[PPRuNe Pop]

Well. I am impressed!

Hairyplane's subjective post yesterday. A few supporting posts to his complaints, and today the Airport Manager answers positively. That's what I call action.

Thank you for your quick response David and let us hope those who visit Kemble henceforth will have nothing but good to say about the AV8 restaurant. Visitors will be checking - that's for sure!

[BEagle]

"It strikes me that, knowing the Ppopularity of PPRuNe, whoever runs the AV8 had better answer your complaints pretty quickly before the rumour mill gets going!"

David has speedily and courteously done so. Many thanks indeed for that.

Some sample 'what's on' menus on the website would be nice, if that could be arranged?

Kemble deserves to do well - an idyllic Cotswold setting with some wonderful aircraft often to be seen. And clearly some imagineative and rightfully ambitious management!

[Dan Winterland]

The power of pprune!

Beags - bit of a drive, but a nice idea. However, I think a good time was had by all last night at the Vines.

[BEagle]

Wasn't terribly impressed with the duck.... A bit 'school dinnerish' and I think it died of old age.

But the rest was OK. B£oody noisy thanks to the hard floor and lack of furnishings - but the company was excellent. Methinks there'll be some sore heads today though! A certain BACE co-pilot for one!

Good job the ba chaps who went to the wrong place first had a bit more than 20 min div fuel onboard for once..

Shall certainly plan a little trip to the AV8 in the Spring - guess you'll be eating rice by then? And your duck will be a lot crispier!

[Timothy]

Cross-posted from Flyer, in case David doesn't look there
dy1,

There are not many airfield managers who would have had the humility and courage to have made that post, and it has encouraged me to give Kemble another go.

"Sorry" is a word used far too rarely.

You say that landing fees are down, have you removed the anomoly about >2T twins, which were just about driven out by £33 landing fees under Allan's regime?

[Curtis E Carr]

An excellent and timely reply from David Young. It's a pity that our politicians are unable to do likewise.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

It's a pity that our politicians are unable to do likewise.

Dunno what it's like round your way mate, but round here I and my fellow councillors are perfectly happy to put our hands up when we've screwed something up. Not all politicians are the same.

[Timothy]

I have had an offline conversation with David in which he has told me that the landing fee for an Aztec/C310 is now £16; £6 for circuits.

This is excellent news and shows that Kemble under new management is going to be a much more attractive than before.

[Algirdas]

The good things

I flew in yesterday (Sunday) - the weather wasn't great (it was gusting 30kts at about 20deg off-runway when I left) - so there weren't that many visiting pilots sticking around for long, but the AV8 was quite full.
I must say the service was pretty slow, even though all I ordered was 3 cappucinos (the foreign lass claimed she was unable to make them, and had to get one of the other staff to do it). It took about 10 minutes from wanting to order, to getting delivery.
Past experience of the service is that it tends to be a bit too laid-back, with not enough acknowledgement that you are waiting to be served - but the food has been generally very good when it arrives.
On the upside, the tower service was exemplary, despite their workload being very intense, and the ground marshalling was excellent - this is a great destination - where else can you sit in such nice surroundings, watching such a great variety of a/c taking off and landing, from flexwings through to fast ex-warbirds. Delighted that DY has stuck his hand up, is doing something about the silly landing fee situation, and has the AV8 issues in hand! I for one will continue to fly in!

[Hairyplane]

AV8

Having started this thread I am greatly reassured by Davids humble and frank response and, if he promises not to spit in my tea(?!) The lovely Nicky and I will be back, especially as I have since learned that pre-1946 aircraft qualify for free landings. 3 of my aircraft are older than this.

Hurrah!

I'll report again after our next visit.

Hairyplane.

[carpet]

It seems that the main problem at AV8 is that the service is "variable". It doesn't seem to occur to anyone that the service is only slow when the restaurant is extremely busy. AV8 is staffed by a small number of people, and they all do the best that they can. On less busy days, the staff have time to concentrate on the customers and on the busier days, they only have time to serve food and drinks as quickly as they possibly can and the kitchen staff can only get food out as quickly as it cooks.

Management need to staff the restaurant properly with enough people to cover what is a large venue. The problem is that the young students, who usually do part time bar work in pubs, etc, tend not to have transport, which makes it difficult to find staff at AV8, as it is not accessible by public transport and taxis are expensive in this area.

I work for one of the companies on the airfield, and am a regular visitor to AV8 and realise how much pressure the staff are under. They work a lot of hours and they work hard and posts like this are just totally demoralising for them. How about some constructive criticism, instead of just trying to run the place down? Comments like:

I must say the service was pretty slow, even though all I ordered was 3 cappuccinos (the foreign lass claimed she was unable to make them, and had to get one of the other staff to do it)

are not helpful. This was a new member of staff (English, not foreign), who had not been trained on the cappuccino machine, due to the fact that it was too busy to train her.

Other comments, such as:

The waitress/ barmaid lost all control of the situation when impatient customers walked behind the bar to pour their own pints!

are untrue. I was there and the "impatient customers" were just helping out the staff by serving drinks and clearing tables, as there was too much for one person to cope with - I was one of them. The girl out the front (there was only one, and who knows how many customers) was having to take orders, serve drinks, serve the food, clear the tables and load the dishes and glasses into the washer - she is not the bionic woman!

As for this comment - it's absolute bulls@@t:

I always tend to find about 7 firemen standing around drinking cappuccinos staring at people as they arrive. It can be very off-putting especially for women (my wife told me).

There are never more than 3 firemen on duty at a time, unless there is a big event on and none of them drink cappuccinos. If you have a problem, no matter how big or small, those guys will be there to deal with it - and they will deal with it professionally and I'm sure your wife wouldn't complain if they had just pulled her out of a burning aircraft and were staring at her to see if she was breathing.

There are a lot of comments on the fact that the manager is foreign and does not have a good command of English. She probably has a better command of English than most English people, but speaks with an accent.

As a non-flyer, I always thought pilots were broad minded people with a lot more common sense than most, but it seems that they are actually as narrow-minded as the rest of the bigots out there. Give AV8 a break - maybe some of you could try helping out behind the bar until they find some more staff, like my colleagues and I did on Friday?

[Charlie Zulu]

I thought the AV8 restaurant at Kemble was good until...

The prices for soft drinks such as Coke were sky high for a measly little glass full of ice.

The "Thai Green Curry" was ordered by my friend who knows what Thai Green Curry is having worked in Asia for the last twenty years or so. Well it was served and was nothing like the Thai Green Curry that he knew...

It was questioned and back came the answer "yes sir it is Thai Green Curry". Well it looked more like Pasta and a bit of sauce to us.

Now I know what Thai Green Curry is from eating it a few times in Thailand over the last month, I can certainly say that either the Chef at the AV8 was out at the time or he/she doesn't have a clue.

Sorry but on previous visits the AV8 was nice, clean, friendly... now its over priced, poor service and well we were just lucky we had all day to wait for the plane to go through its 50 hour check anyway.

I would dearly like to go back to Kemble soon to be shown that I am wrong but from the tone of the previous posts I doubt that I will.

Best wishes,

Charlie Zulu.