I generally like to support independent restaurants, so we were going to go to Mamma Mia’s but the slight step at the doorway looked like it might be a bit of an effort for my powerchair, plus, you have to pull up on the pavement outside, which isn’t ideal. We decided we’d give Bill’s a go instead as we’d had a couple of recommendations.

Pete did a reccy beforehand and the staff were very helpful, showed him the accessible loo, (very spacious, plenty of grabrails) and told him it would be no problem to pop the chair somewhere out the way while we ate – they even said they had recharged someone’s chair recently!

Pulling up outside is no problem then you could leave your car there if you have a blue badge as it’s OK to park on yellow lines if you aren’t blocking anything, otherwise, you could do what we did and park on Lendal.

There are some booths but most of the tables are movable (some are up a step but plenty are level access – and properly level it is too – no bumpy threshold!) with good solid tables and easily moved chairs. They suggested we left the chair by the main door, so we disconnected the power – it was races weekend, didn’t want to take any chances! The décor is funky, the piped music quite loud, and as I said, the staff are great – really helpful with chairs and so on. I don’t know if they have had training but they were very aware of accessibility issues.

The food is OK but not brilliant – we had a meze between us all as a starter then four different mains and some puds so a reasonable range and while there was nothing wrong with any of it, you would expect better for the price. We’ve paid those prices in many a gastropub, for example, and got a much better meal. They did a very good decaff to finish up with – actually they brought it before the desserts – perhaps we should have specified but you would kind of expect it to come after or at least at the same time!

I had seen a comment on tripadvisor saying that the optional 10% service charge did not go to the staff, so we thought we might leave it separately but when we asked the waitress who had looked after us, she said the tips were divided between the staff.

In all, I’m glad we tried Bill’s and may go again but will continue to check out other accessible restaurants. As ever, the overall impression you get is a mixture of various aspects – the food is just one of them – and the overall impression was good.

Check out our other reviews of accessible restaurants.