Drake's Restaurant in Guildford

If your idea of perfect pancakes is dense, chewy, and dry, Bill's is the perfect place for you! These are the kind of pancakes you need to cut with a knife, and once you successfully hack off a piece, after a few seconds in your mouth all your saliva will have been absorbed as you chew (and chew, and chew).Other descriptors for these "pancakes"? Grainy, burnt, and crunchy. As if semolina flour was used by mistake. Light and fluffy these are not. It's as if someone who had heard of pancakes and seen them in a photo, but never actually eaten them, was tasked with designing this recipe. The more surprising thing is that no one who actually works at Bill's seems to have ever tried the result themselves before giving the green light to serve this to actual customers. Because surely if they had, someone would have realized the responsibility to put a stop to the effort before it got this far.The maple syrup is piled on generously, doing its very best to cover up the flavor and texture of the chewy cakes beneath, and the bacon is reasonably good. To be honest Bill's could just remove the chew bombs beneath and serve a dish of syrup covered bacon and it'd be a much better offering.You'd think they would have noticed by now the massive number of pancake plates going back to the kitchen half eaten and use that as a reason to investigate a potential upgrade to the recipe - like, for example, using any sort of liquid in the batter.In any case, all the staff we interacted with were extremely friendly and helpful, so we can't fault them for that.

Walked in got seated almost immediately, however there was poor spacing and the noise levels were very high. Spoke with the staff and after a few conversations we were reseated in their basement by a very kind member of staff. We then had our food delivered, when we ordered we asked that the avocado on toast would arrive with just avocado as my daughter has eating requirements. Sadly the first delivery they hadn't made the customisations and so my daughter refused to eat it, not only did we get a second with the changes but a third to compensate us. The Plant Plate was absolutely not worth the cost, for £13 you got very little and I was missing parts of my breakfast. If it wasn't for the very helpful and kind staff we would have had a terrible experience.

Had an excellent experience yesterday evening with my server Elena. My husband and I had a fab night! Would definitely recommend, our meal was lovely but not as lovely as the service! 10/10 We’ll be back ;)

Awsome place manager was an absolute diamond working outside of his hours to make sure we had a lovely meal thank you

We had a big group lunch here this weekend, the staff were great and we sat in the lovely vaulted room downstairs. Service was good; we weren't rushed or kept waiting at all and it worked out fine for a group of 20 with a few small kids. The food was below average for Bills, we had set Xmas dinner menu. The veggie/vegan was particularly disappointing. Such a shame because they have a lovely menu usually, would like to see a set winter menu with favourites from the restaurant done well - ditch the standard Xmas dinner and offer some more interesting seasonal dishes please! I recommend the venue 100% but we wouldn't go for the Xmas set again.

I love the decor and ambiance... the food is interesting and creative, and we received friendly but professional service.Our dessert was a stand out! So much so that I'm going to make it myself for friends...This delicious dessert was the carrot cake doughnuts... 😋

We had a very early breakfast there on the day of our wedding. We were a group of 17 and had family and friends coming from abroad. Everything was just perfect. The food, the atmosphere, the service. Everything went without a hitch and everybody was delighted and loved the food. Definitely a great start of a very important and special day for us. Thank you very much again to all the Guildford team for such a great experience.

Always a pleasant experience going to Bill's! Worth getting there early for their breakfast/brunch menu, which is DELICIOUS. Staff have always been friendly and chatty with us, which makes the experience even better. Usually quite busy, so probably best to book if you want to secure a table.

We drove down to Guildford for breakfast last Sunday. We found Bill’s at random, and it was a pleasant surprise. Amiable staff and delicious food.

We always have an amazing brunch at bills. The food is always so tasty, the staff were so attentive to us and me and my friends had a lovely catch up over brunch!!