The Engine Yard at Belvoir Castle

The Fuel Tank Cafe is my absolute favourite place.We like to eat lunch out and we’ve tried a lot of places.This place is my personal favourite of all of them.The upstairs is particularly lovely.The decor is beautiful. This is an understatement. From the upholstery to the lighting and even the crockery and glassware.The staff friendly.The menu currently only does soup and sandwiches. But they do them well.Coffee is great and in a very decent sized cup.My only issue is vegan options. They do however do soy milk.Children’s food is great also.I honestly can not urge you enough to try this place.They are currently building a bigger kitchen which will apparently be ready for Christmas.Can’t wait.Outside is a lovely thought out park.There is a small bit lovely garden centre.A unique toy shop, deli, chocolate shop, home shop, clothes shop amongst others.What a lovely little place.

The food was excellent, I tried the fish and chips and the vegetarian breakfast. Rose wine, yum yum, coffee very good. It was ALL AMAZING! The lovely vibes of the place, the countryside, but what was most wonderful, was after coming up from London and attending the Noisily festival, I needed a place to work from online, and the Engine Yard Cafe - their staff, were the kindest, most beautiful people I had ever met. They were always asking how I was, if everything was ok. They made sure I had quiet time when I needed to be online where I had to give a challenging work class for 3 hours, they allowed me to use their bar downstairs. I mean, I couldn't fault the place or the people, top notch! Was my peaceful sanctuary and good food place when getting away from the craziness of the Noisily Festival! Even though that was great too! Hope to come back to the Engine Yard and stay there too, as there are lovely glamping tents and rooms!!!!! TOTALLY 100% recommended!!!!!

What a disappointing place to visit in a couple of years this has gone from a buzzing place to a deserted and quiet. People get out of there car's walk in to the yard 2 minutes later back in the car and they are gone all the fabulous little stores are empty and the tenants have moved out. Such a shameUnfortunately we won't be back.

I haven’t been to the Engine Yard for a while after most businesses ‘left’ and the food went downhill. But gave it another visit today after hearing it was now with a new management company to bring it up to a decent standard. Oh dear. If I could award no stars for service I would. There were no staff serving downstairs on entering and we waited. We saw a waiter who was busy rushing around and asked if we could seat ourselves upstairs as the ground floor area was quite full. He said we could. There was a business meeting in session at a central table. The two ladies were talking loudly about marketing for the fuel tank which seemed odd in the middle of their restaurant instead of an office or discreet corner. One of the ladies asked us if we’d just wandered up there by ourselves? It wasn’t a very friendly welcome as she turned out to be our waitress.The menus were a bit hit & miss. I had a clip board with 3 breakfast menus which finished serving 90 minutes previously Only one of our party had the correct 3 different menus. Nothing looked very inspiring but in fairness at that point we decided not to order and leave. So can’t comment on the food even though as we rose to leave there was a huge pile of dog vomit behind us on the floorboards, we felt as if we’d definitely made the right decision.Beautiful surroundings cannot compensate for good customer service and its certainly lacking here.

Stopped here a week ago (mid May) on a long bike ride for lunch. Very pleasantly surprised- the wood fired pizzas were excellent. And there was plenty of choice for other refreshments. I'll definitely be back. We timed our visit perfectly.... soon after we placed our order a long queue formed.For dog owners there is a great selection of doggy treats.

Disappointing visit this year after many years of a pre Christmas shopping trip after a country walk. A lot of the shops are empty or even closing down. There was a couple of nice shops still open but no real quantities of visitors which must be demoralising for the shop owners. Fingers crossed it will pick up next year for the trades

Upmarket shopping area at Belvoir Castle. Predominantly high class provisions, a butchers, a shop selling teas and coffees and one with continental foods. There is also a very nice cafe which had very nice food and friendly staff although like everything else it was all a bit on the pricey side. Worth a visit if you aren't too far away or fancy visiting the castle too.

March the 14th became memorable day for three reasons, one it was Mothering Sunday and two as well as being a Mother it was my wife’s Birthday, the third comes later in this review.With my daughter at home on rare leave from her duties at Coventry University Hospital and boy has she been through the mill due to Covid! She and I hatched a plan to surprise my wife by going to the Engine shed yard at Belvoir.She had always wanted an Olive tree and we had heard the Idle Mole garden shop stocked them. I spent just under £300 here and most of it at the garden shop, they are not cheap outlets, but local and to be supported was our thoughts. Covid distancing rules were causing queues as we all expect and adhered to for the safety of all, but it caused long delays another point to note re parking times.So the observant readers of this review will be asking what is the third reason and why give 1 star for this review when we clearly were having a fantastic visit?Two weeks later, we received a strange and unexpected letter, which on opening was found to be a parking penalty notice asking for £60 within 14 days or it would increase to £100. My error apparently was an over stay of parking of 17 minutes; they allow an hour for free which under the pressing Covid circumstances is an inadequate time anyway. I thought £60 for 17 minutes was dam expensive!We due to the long time this notice had took to come through our door had little time to appeal; However, as we had not seen any signs and if we had seen them would have done the honest thing and paid; so an appeal was completed at 21.30 ish PM. Amazingly at this time of night, within 45 minutes of our appeal it was rejected (clearly an automated defaulted to reject system). We thought we will contact the Castle Estate to try and get them to observe in a fair way we had clearly made a human error. However, their appeal box on their website is linked to Parking initials website directly and so what was the point? Clearly the small businesses Landlord, who is one of the richest men in the country, has little interest in what his Estate Management were doing to his humbled local community.We revisited the Engine yard in order to have a better look within a calmer car park one Sunday afternoon.We drove in from the same direction again and took the pictures attached to this review. The sign on the entrance is there, but is only on the Right-hand side and we were on the left as we drove in. On the day we arrived there was a queue of vehicle’s coming out obscuring our view and so we concluded that’s how it was not seen. The other sign is near to the shops, but some 12+ foot high, unless you walk looking at the sky and not at what is on offer at the shops, this is also an easy one to miss. Furthermore, instead of being in the white and lime green colour scheme of the parking company, it is styled to blend in with the blue and gold discrete Belvior Estate colour branding and not very clear at all (see other picture attached and see how high above the persons head near to it). After making these observations, we put it all together in a letter and sent to the Director of this company (I got his name through company house) at their offices in Birmingham. This Director to our annoyance ignored our communication and so we realised it was all too weighted against the normal hard working man to attempt to take them on. We had offered to cover his administration costs and pay the parking fee on top, which we felt was fair given it was only for 17 minutes.It’s such a shame that most of these businesses will suffer as a consequence of their Landlords attempts to put off their prospected customers. It certainly spoilt our thoughts of what should have been a very special day.The Landlords (lives in the big place on the hill of Belvior) Estate Management team need to understand if you drive the customers away the businesses will fail and cease to pay their rent. Not the best of business plan going forwards.

We visited recently and had coffee and cakes in the cafe. At the time it was very busy and although the service was slow the coffee and cakes were excellent and I thought reasonably priced.Most of the shop units are now occupied and well worth a visit. I would be happy to return.