Old Swan Tea Rooms - Powys

Awful!! Rude staff and mediocre hot chocolate and cappuccino we will not be returning . Only pleasant when we were leaving I think they realised that they were unwelcoming!

A lovely warm welcome to the place and took a tight table in the window because it was almost full. The window seat was great to watch the world go by.My wife had the leek and potato soup and thoroghly enjoyed it. My pasty and chips came with some of the best chips I have had and the pasty was good. This was followerd by rock cake and tiramisu. yummy. The friendly staff were welcoming to all and I noticed that they paid extra care to the eldrly locals, so nice to see an unhurried service with warm staff. Thanks again.

We were a group of 31 elderly people. They accomodated us with only 24 hours notice. Very good food, with generous portions, at a resonable price and very friendly service. We were lucky to have found this cafe.

Passing though en route to the coast decided to stop. Good food, great value and friendly staff. What’s not to like? I highly recommend their “ultimate sandwich” but there is a wide variety of food and cake on offer.

Passing through town at 2pm, we wanted to buy food to take away and eat later. Thinking we would get something nice, and possibly homemade, we stopped at this cafe because it had a bakery counter. As soon as we entered, the woman at the counter said, in an unfriendly manner, and without any other greeting, “we’re only serving take away drinks and what’s on display in the cabinet”. There were no prices on the products. The woman told me the price of the Welsh Cakes, which I deemed to be rather high. None of the other products looked as though they’d been made with any flair, creativity or pride. I now wish I’d left without buying anything, because my mistake was to then ask for a small chicken and mushroom pie, for which the woman charged £5. That too was expensive for what the pie looked like. However, it was only an hour later that we realised the extent of the awfulness of our pie purchase: the pie was 8cm in diameter, with a thin pastry case and top. Whilst not having the appearance of a yummy homemade pie, from the outside there was nothing to indicate the true horror of what was under the industrially manufactured crust. Biting into the pie revealed a largely hollow interior. It might have been a better pie if the interior had been entirely devoid of any filling. Why? Well this ‘filling’ comprised of no more than two dessert spoons of pale mush. We didn’t detect anything resembling chicken in that mush, nor mushroom. The most pleasant components were flecks of ice, which were a distraction from the insipid gloop that the manufacturer might have called gravy. When handing the pie to my partner, it tilted slightly, upon which water slopped out of the pie we estimate the amount of water to be two or three dessert spoons. There’s no doubt that we’d inadvertently bought a pie that was at the extraordinarily cheap and nasty end of the spectrum of factory manufactured pies. However, this woeful and deplorable tearoom had gone one better, and made the UK’s most unappealing pie even worse. I considered writing this cautionary review three days ago, in case I was poisoned by the pie (and didn’t live to tell the tale).