The Cellar Door

We had a really wonderful evening here. The food was excellent, and the service was extremely thoughtful (not just checking all the boxes). One of our party was vegan, and they accommodated that splendidly (with advance notice).

The food here was delicious and one of the best vegetarian dishes I’ve had in a long time. Other half had the duck done to perfection and my old fashioned cocktail was very expertly mixed. Fantastic find. Can’t recommend this place enough.

Best restaurant in central Durham in my opinion. Seasonal menu that’s always up to date and caters to a wide range of tastes despite being very concise. I always come here for special occasions and the food never disappoints. Brilliant, friendly waitstaff, excellent wine selection, great ambiance. Special mention to the seafood scotch egg starter, inspired and delicious!

This place deserves to at least be a solid 4 stars (and is 5 stars for food quality for their awesome fixed-​price lunches!). Was amazing value for an outstanding lunch. My wife and I both got steaks (I got the rib-​eye and she had the sirloin; both excellent pieces of meat and cooked to perfection). My son had the shredded duck salad; also delicious. Appetizers were good as well. The desserts were actually the low-​point of the dinner; just so-​so. The portions were huge and provided enough leftovers for us to make a small dinner out of. The atmosphere is nice (kind of fancy) and they have a decent selection of drinks. My only real complaint was that they seemed understaffed by about one server on the afternoon that we were there… and thus service was very slow (but friendly/​nice). For lunch it was ok for our kids (though the place is kind of fancy and not particularly well equipped to deal with them — I was just happy that they let us bring our kids in!). Park in the large pay-​to-​park public parking garage nearby.

My sister has recommended the lunch time deal at Cellar Door which is about £15 for 3 courses including what she said was a generous steak main course. I’d be staying with my mum and her neighbour had gone to town complaining about all aspects of her own visit there but I wasn’t to be put off as I had my eye on the wood pigeon starter and the sticky toffee pudding.
The lunch time special finishes at 4 which is a pretty great amount of time to cash in but thanks to my Aunty showing up late — as always — we missed the lunch time special completely but decided to have the a la carte menu anyway.
We sat down and ordered some drinks which in truth took a fair while to arrive even though it was only two glasses of wine, a bottled fruit cider and a piña colada.
Eventually we ordered food. The wood pigeon starter wasn’t on the a la carte menu but the waitress kindly checked if I could have it anyway so I got my wood pigeon and ordered the main of lamb shank and leek mash.
The food did take a while to arrive but it was worth the wait. My wood pigeon was not a let down and was served with loads of fresh rocket. There was no chance of grabbing a scallop from the starter my mum and sister shared as they were most territorial about but I did manage to taste some of the beef brisket starter my Aunty got which was delicious!
The lamb shank fell off the bone as soon as I forked it and the mash was creamy and delicious. My whole party fell silent as we ate the lot, despite the starters and also the complimentary breads and olives that were given.
I’m a firm believer that lunch or dinner should be a leisurely affair and am always sceptical of people who complain about waiting times — fast food is for drive thrus, not a la carte restaurants. However, with only one table seated in the whole restaurant, the only really complaint I have about Cellar Door is that they could have been speedier with drinks, particularly with two bartenders available.
One minor grip would be that it would have been nice to have more selection of side orders. I could happily have chomped away on some extra vegetables but only asparagus was available and it didn’t feel like an asparagus sort of day.
Cellar Door is super cute, tucked away and feels relatively chic by Durham standards. A little quicker with the wine and tidying up some unsightly exposed wiring on the stairs and it’s a 5 star jobby for me.
And for those of you who want your burger in 5 minutes pronto — there is Burger King on North Road :-)

We had a couple of hours to kill in Durham on Sunday lunchtime and we stumbled upon this little gem. We hadn’t booked anywhere and thought it would be difficult to get a table but the inside was empty. The girl suggested that we go outside under the gazebo as it was a sunny day and there was a nice view of the river. She wasn’t wrong. We had perfectly cooked pigeon breast with rocket salad, then I had the burger and my wife had the duck salad. Everything was gorgeous. Service was very friendly, we were there for about an hour and we’ll definitely be going back again. I had a very expensive but very nice Belgian beer with the meal and my wife had sparkling mineral water which was Norwegian in an unusual bottle. The two course Sunday lunch special was £12.95 and was worth every penny I thought. Well worth a try.

This place is so pretty! The food tasted great too! We ordered the duck starter, burger and sea bass and tried all the desserts, chocolate lava cake, Crème brûlée, and toffee pudding.
The burger is huge! The sea bass quite salty, wouldn’t recommend, the table next to us had the steak, OMG! I wish I ordered that instead.
I ordered the strawberry garden cocktail, so good!
All the desserts were good but the mango and passion fruit Crème brûlée was very runny…
The service was ok but very very slow… We came for lunch there were only 3 other guests /​tables beside us.
There were 4 of us at our table, and it took 2 hours for us to finish…
We sat outside under the canopy because it was a nice day but all those stairs, the poor servers!
They were all very nice but either the chef was real slow or the servers were tired from all those stairs it took waay too loooooong to get our food or see our server…
Also, two tables beside us had to ask for different dishes since they were given the wrong order…

I must say I was shocked by the reviews I saw on Unilocal.I can only guess this place has improved drastically since the last reviews.
My wife and I came for dinner and the food was excellent, matching the cute décor and ambiance. Tucked away down steep stairs from Saddler Street, the aroma coming up from the restaurant as you enter gives you an idea of the tastes to come.
We had the salt and pepper squid and scallops for starters, followed by the chicken and leg of lamb. The cheese board to finish was the perfect end to a perfect meal.
We even came back the next afternoon to have wine overlooking the river.

It’s been over a year since i wasted my money/​time in this dreadful place, maybe it has improved?
It was over priced, rude staff, cold food, order was wrong, waiter argued with me over the order, slow delivery, the chef came out of his hole as he wanted to see who dared complain about his food and glared at me, when I asked for the bill, we were given the wrong bill. Truely a comedy of errors.
Have been about 2 –3 times previous and food was always cold, and service slow/​muddled.
Unforgivable.

Very disappointing. This place is lovely on the inside, very nicely decorated. Just like Angela, however, we had an avocado related disaster. In this case it was a question of the avocado on my friend’s pizza, which came with the skin still attached. The waitress took it away and brought a new one, explaining that they had a trainee chef on that night WHO HAD NEVER SEEN AN AVOCADO BEFORE and didn’t know that you couldn’t eat the peel. Seriously, Durham, this is the level to which we have stooped? I don’t think I want to eat anything prepared by someone who can’t work out that avocado peel is too tough to eat. 20 minutes later, when her new pizza arrived, the avocado was seriously under-​ripe and basically inedible anyway, so the whole thing seemed a bit pointless.
They had also run out of all sodas except Diet Coke and when we asked to see the dessert menu, we were told that they didn’t have any desserts left, but we could have a coffee if we wanted one. We didn’t.
We were all there for a friend’s going-​away party, and they just about managed to ruin the night for us. Amateurish, is the word that comes to mind.

Tried this place with a friend the other night.
When we walked in at about 6pm it was completely empty and stayed that way the entire time we were there. The young staff were nice enough, but looked pretty bored standing around waiting for customers.
I started with an appetizer from the specials board which was avocado salad. When I received my salad it looked pretty small and lackluster for the price, but fresh. It was actually small slices of avocado with a few pieces of lettuce, some red onion and peppers. The rest of the vegetables were fine enough, but the avocado was just, really awful. It was so hard (Im assuming unripe) that I couldnt cut it and I could barely get my fork in it. When I ate it it crunched in my mouth like an apple. Very odd. I was really looking forward to the rich, buttery taste of avocado, but it was not here. I could not figure out why they had this as a special if they werent using ripe avocados.
Both of us ended up ordering the same entrée as the menu seemed to be a bit light on the pasta offerings (only three or four if I remember correctly). So, we both ordered the penne pollo. This was another failed dish. The chicken tasted as if it had just been heated up and cut into cubes. It didnt seem to have any flavor or seasoning to it at all. The sauce was a very bland version of tomato cream. Didnt have any of the brightness you expect from a tomato sauce and lacked salt.
Overall this meal was very underwhelming and didnt encourage me to return to The Cellar Door anytime soon.