Grounded Coffee and Sandwich Bar

Eight of us including two young kids had been enjoying the amazing play park and Giants Glen forest walk along the slopes of the beautiful Slieve Gullion forest park. After a few hours thoughts turned to food and toilets. There’s a Grounded café in the forest park which looks like an old barn. Its been a very long time since I visited either of the two Grounded cafés in the area. My two recollections of this Grounded café — as I said is withinSlieve Gullion forest park (and what a great idea that is) was of staff chaos, slow service, overcharging and overall great value food — provided of course that you aren’t over charged. That said on my last visit I’d asked a forgetful waitress for a prawn salad only to get warm water large prawn salad instead of North Atlantic cold water prawns, which is what I’d had many times before and had expected and it was what the menu said as well. So I was cross at the detrimental change not mentioned when I ordered nor mentioned on the menu to a cheaper less tasty food (when I explained my dilemma to the waitress it was clear she had no idea what I was talking about and probably cared less) and in truth this had been one of my regular dishes in Grounded. I was made still more cross at the appearance of £1 on my bill that the staff simply couldn’t explain. So this time when Grounded was suggested I went in thinking we should go elsewhere. Well I’m pleased to say that there was much less chaos and nearly the same value for money. Prices have risen — a soup & sandwich combo is £7.50, which is as expensive as I’ve seen around, the average is usually between £5 and £6.50. The all — day breakfast is around £7 too, so most mains are about £1 above what I consider average, reasonable prices in the area and its also a bit much considering you have to queue to place your own order and pay up front. A bare, sliced in half, kids toastie is £2.50 and it’s disappointing that there isn’t a bit more effort or imagination here, say cut into fingers and stacked on the plate — with the unit cost of the kids toastie probably less than 50p the price should instead reflect a small drink and maybe a lollypop or a scoop of ice cream, after all when little Sue or Sam are quiet the adults are calmer. That said the food is darn good, the post order service was quick and accurate and the adult meal portions are generous. I took a soup & sandwich combo because it was mushroom soup and the soup was wonderful: clearly freshly made and stuffed with chunks of mushroom (not a word usually associated with mushrooms) simply devine. The coffee is good but not great — Grounded can learn from Maya café or café Krem yet priced top end. Downsides were having to queue for several minutes to order and pay up front (I’m not a fan), no useful credit card facility — which has been the case as long as I can remember and is just not good enough, little to no contact with serving staff and far too few customer toilets, causing longer queues than the queue to pay up front. The food would make it four star but the high end prices and the downsides makes it at most a three — next time we may take a picnic as there are lots of picnic tables in the park or consider going elsewhere. Our bill; just under £55.