have eaten here quite a few times over the last three years i have lived
nearby and it used to be good value (not cheap but good portion sizes
and great food) and a really warm welcoming place which as a local is an
obvious bonus as you would like to think you had somewhre on your
doorstep worthy of visiting often.
They used to make great home made food, some really nice pies and a great bbq in the garden in the summer.
Having
eaten here twice in the last three months however I feel compelled to
write this review after two trips which were a lesson in poor cooking,
poor management and terrible customer service.
In both visits with my family of 6 they have missed an order, both times for the same person!
The
first time they forgot his order and rectified it delivering a meat pie
when a veggie one was ordered, thankfully the person eating can eat
both, but a rather strange mistake..
The second time they just
lost the order completely, then after having a debate with the waitree
about the 20-30 minutes wait till a new dish was brough, they sent out
the manager who proceeded to argue it was ever ordered in the first
place as there was only portion left on the automated till so we were
obviously mistake, we couldnt have ordered it.
Personally i would
thought an apology would be better, and an offer of something else was
the way to go, but instead the managers preference was to stand there
and argue instead about our own ability to order. and how his automated
till couldnt be wrong. nice! We asked for two, if your staff didnt put
two through or didnt notice, that is so clearly the customers fault and
they should be argued with and taught a lesson!
We opted for a
second shepherds pie to replace our mistake non ordered item, sadly when
it came it had been nuked so hard in the microwave that the meat was
black, burnt, rock hard and stuck to the dish, we opted to let the
champion of customer service inspect it, for him to tell us that this
black, rock hard substance was in fact cheese from the top of the pie,
erm no we turned it over, the cheese is now that orange stuff thats now
on the bottom, but alas no he was haaving none of it, we were clearly
deluded and cheese is black, makes a nice noise when you bounce a fork
off it and looks like a thin layer of burnt meat, no idea what sort of
cheese it is, i worked in a kitchen for 6 years as a youngster and its
like no cheese i have ever seen, i obviously had a very sheltered life
as it tastes just like burnt meat. I would like to point out that i have
seen more meat content in a small tin of dog food for a puppy than i
had in the shepherds pie offered.
Sadly the rest of the meal was
nothing to write home about, the portions are ssmall, i dont just mean
small, i mean minature, i could count the number of fries on both hands
and one foot, my scampi was fried to the point i could have used them as
rubber bullets in a crowd control exercise.
the kids portions
was probably smaller than a kids happy mealand frankly they would have
enjoyed that more, the mash potato had more lumps than it did potato,
can only guess my idea of mash is obviously incorrect and rock hard
pieces of potato buried in a small covering of mash is clearly how its
done.
Finally if you really would like to enter in to an argument
then i suggest talking to the manager, he is rude and overly defensive
about his operation refusing to accept any form of criticism or blame,
even to the point where burnt meat is really cheese and the customer is
clearly wrong. I think in our three meetings he did manage one apology
albeit grudgingly, he did at one point offer a refund for the burnt pie,
but in realising it was a replacement meal for one they had missed
simply said you haven't paid for it yet anyway and walked off, an
interesting lesson in customer service and one that guarantee's i would
not return to even purchase a packet of crisps for fear of receiving
something completely different.
The pub really needs to return to
its roots, look after its locals, cook real food properly (not frozen
veg or stuff left in water for hours) and learn to cook with something
other than a microwave, thats not real or good food, thats just nasty
when its burnt to the dish as you thought 10 was seconds on the
microwave dial.
Serving luke warm food on burning plates is a
rather strange tactic, either one from having everything nuked in mike
the microwave or its sat under a heated lamp waiting to be served far to
long.
Oh did i mention that in the summer they used to have
BBQ's that were packed out with people queing out the door. Tonight, car
park half empty when we got there and left, wonder why.. read more
