About The Waiting Room
The Waiting Room in Eaglescliffe, Stockton-on-Tees is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2026, as one of the UK’s longest established vegetarian restaurants. Serving big fresh dishes of imaginative homely food, this previous winner of the Vegetarian Society’s Best Restaurant In The UK Award occupies a lovely Victorian terrace house on Station Road, right by the recently connection-maxing Eaglescliffe train station. The restaurant includes an elegant-bohemian front dining room with high ceilings, a large light, airy conservatory seating 60, which stages extraordinary live music events, a fabulous community bar in the old chemist shop next door and a pretty, vibey street-side garden, as well as a bakery and vegetarian takeaway with a wood-fired pizza oven next door in the other direction.
The Waiting Room is a family neighbourhood restaurant established by Jenny Harding in 1985/86, and run by Jenny’s son Luke since 2003. Luke recruited several incredible colleagues who have stayed together for over 20 years helping to run the restaurant with tremendous consistency and care, earning numerous awards and accolades in that time, including regular features in The Observer Food Magazine Reader’s Awards.
The restaurant’s consistently imaginative dishes and menus have always centred around abundant fresh vegetables and whole foods, featuring full-flavoured cooking that is both healthy and very delicious. The restaurant’s food and ethos are so celebrated and renowned in fact that Luke was asked to create a new restaurant at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art as a “living artwork” version of the Waiting Room between 2015 and 2019, which in turn also won an award as being the ‘Best Restaurant in The North East’.
The Waiting Room is a vibrant and important cultural hub within Teesside, renowned for hosting over 1000 exceptional live music and art events with its Waiting for Sunday left field cabaret of events; and in recent years we ‘knocked through’ and developed a popular bar in the old chemist shop next door, complete with a great sun-trap street-side garden.
Having always made their own bread, following the lockdowns the business also embarked on creating a new bakery and licensed vegetarian takeaway - vvroom - (next door in the other direction) which includes spectacular wood-fired pizzas, restaurant food, wine and beer taps.
The Waiting Room is now also licensed as a venue for wedding ceremonies.
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SUSTAINABILITY
A significant motivation for operating The Waiting Room as a vegetarian (and very vegan-friendly) restaurant is for the ethical ecologically regenerative credentials of doing so. Research shows that plant-based diets have up to 70% lower environmental impact than meaty diets [Oxford Medical Sciences]. Although, making delicious sumptuously healthy food that people love to eat remains our primary motivation.
The Waiting Room adopted measures recommended by ‘Net Zero Teesside’, such as installing solar panels, together with air-source heating to lower the restaurant’s carbon footprint. The restaurant recycles its glass, cardboard, plastic, aluminium and food etc.
We use local suppliers such as nearby Acorn Organic Dairy, QFS for our daily fresh vegetables, and Suma* (cooperative) for our wholefoods, and more imaginatively than this we often use produce from our own garden and often ‘take in’ donations of excess fruit and vegetables from customer’s gardens and allotments when our neighbours donate these to us. We have a strong relationship with nearby Preston Park volunteer walled garden project - where we've cooked up large scale end of season community meals on several occasions (voluntarily, for hundreds).
Initiatives and actions such as these are aligned to our strong community-minded ethos. We cooked and provided 50 meals a week to Little Sprouts food poverty charity throughout lockdown. We twice cooked-up "The Town Is The Menu" community banquets for 400 people at a time (for FREE!) at The Festival of Thrift - an incredible huge sustainability-themed festival - (when Redcar and then Saltburn were the themes in successive years).
The Waiting Room has often participated in community food and art events, including the Festival of Thrift, Little Sprouts food charity project, SIRF, Glastonbury Festival, town meals, and a huge years-long art project at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern art.
We're positioned alongside Eaglescliffe Railway Station - on the route of the first passenger railway in the world! (Stockton - Darlington) - and promote this as a convenient and ecological way to reach the restaurant, with regular direct trains available to and from London, Manchester, Leeds, York, Sunderland and Whitby - as well as even more frequent, late running trains between Darlington and Saltburn.
INCLUSIVITY AND ACCESSIBILIY
Physical Access Needs
The Waiting Room is accessible to wheelchair users and others, with step-free access throughout the venue. Over the years we’ve rebuilt our facilities to provide a large wheelchair-accessible toilet, with grab handles. We’ve also removed steps within the restaurant by lowering floors, or else by installing a suitable low ramp where necessary, and have landscaped the garden with hard surfaces to allow level access from the pavement to the front doors of the restaurant and bar. Please note that the smaller bar toilets are not wheelchair accessible so that it is necessary to use the facilities at the rear of the restaurant. We ensure that we have a range of tables to include some that are convenient for accommodating a wheelchair.
Please do let us know when booking, if you are a wheelchair user and have any special requirements or or if we can make helpful arrangements, whether booking for a meal or to attend any of our live music and arts events. We’re always happy to discuss this and to help wherever possible.
Sensory, Noise and Light
We will do our best to accommodate requests such as requirement for additional light, large-print menus or reduced background noise, or else particular seating or cushions. We provide considerations for neurodiverse people including quiet spaces. Please ask. Please put any 'special requests[ in the box within the reservation form on our website, or else phone ahead and speak with us.
Small Children and Babies
The Waiting Room has baby changing facilities and high chairs, and offers ‘small plates’ for children of all ages. (See /menus)
Dietary Requirements
Please see The Waiting Room /Menus page for menus and information about ordering food that is suitable for special dietary requirements; including allergies, vegan or gluten-free diets or any other cultural requirements or requests.
INTERIOR/MAP
The Waiting Room includes a homely front room, an bright, airy conservatory with 60 covers, and the Other Room bar, through in the old chemist shop next door.
front room
The Other Room bar
conservatory
GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION
EAGLESCLIFFE TRAIN STATION
vvroom