The Slug and Lettuce

There is a very small window during any given night when this place is okay, however once it starts to get busy it becomes a nightmare to get served. They tend to let in a lot of ‘Lads’ so there are quite a few stripy jumpers and ben sherman shirts knocking about, with the accompanying bad body smells and flatulence, really limiting your ability to enjoy yourself.
You also have to walk through the dance floor in order to get to the bar, usually this is 4 people deep, mainly composed of non dancers trying to keep away from the people who are dancing and increasingly aggravated people waiting to be served. This walk to the bar also involves you having to ask one or more groups of the lower end of the ‘lad’ spectrum to let you through, though as most of them look like convicts and seem to become confused when you say ‘excuse me’, the results can be unpredictable.
Also the drinks are quite expensive, though I suppose this works out considering how many times you will make it to the bar without eventually giving up or getting into a fight. They do have two smoking areas though so the smokers and those sick of breathing other peoples ‘emissions’ can go, This is also handy for the bouncers as they can separate the drunken brawlers and send them out two different doors.
I’m sure this place would be a lot nicer if they stopped letting in the more obvious troublemakers, turned on the air conditioning and spent a bit more on maintaining the décor. Though doing all this while at the same time reducing the price of a pint from £4 may be a bit much for the current owners to manage.
In short, this was at some point a nice place to go, but it has since went into decline, if you find yourself in here watch when the groups of girls leave, this is also your cue to leave, you don’t have to go home, but whatever you do, don’t stay here!

i could write volumes on how dire this place is but it would take ages and waste my time. So to sum it up in a small way its just plain simple terrible too long to get served lack of atmosphere and way too expensive for drinks. Its county durham not new York. After giving this bar one more try on a night out im at the conclusion its the worst bar i have ever been to and i been to a good few and that shames me because im durham thru and thru.

Bar staff rude. our drinks got pinched when we went to toilet. Bar staff didnt care

We have Never had service so bad in our lives. It tokl 45 minutes for the waiter to even notice we had sat down. And that was because We had to walk over and ask if he could come and take our order. This was a quiet Tuesday evening (7:30pm) with relatively few people seated for food, and when the waiter arrived he seemed extremely annoyed that we had dared to call him over. Arrogant even. He did not speak only grunted. We asked for drinks also and felt as if we had committed a crime. We then waited 80 minutes for our starter and with it came no apology only a statement saying they were «out of chips for the main course». We were polite enough to agree to wedges instead but to our dismay we waited another hour and a half for our main courses despite asking 4 times where our meals were (with no apology) with no sight of a waiter in between, other than seeing one waiter walk outside for a cigarette. Other tables complained — although we did not have the energy. I have never experienced such slow inattentive service. It’s as if the waiter had been fired and was working his notice. It was disgraceful. Avoid the slug and lettuce durham for food at all costs.

The food here is awful. Poor quality and over priced.

Absolutely heaving on the weekends, but a really good atmosphere. Part of the new walkergate complex, which has a different feel to the rest of durham, but still a great place for a night out. well worth making it down there for happy hour monday — thursday 5 – 8, some quite good deals, especially on cocktails.

Easy location to the car park which is at the bottom. A bit pricey but a good range of foods. comfortable seating area. The staff seem a bit miserable at times but mostly friendly.
Quite loud in there though if its busy so hard to have a good conversation.

Really nice food, nice atmosphere and nice surroundings. In the fairly newish Walkergate complex, Slug and Lettuce is near the Gala Theatre. I thought the food was really nice and the service was good. Drinks were reasonable. The food was a bit slow, but they were heaving at the time.