Jenni-Emily
SerpAPI
I've got really mixed feelings about this place.
We visited for Sunday lunch after & although the food was good, the experience was far from it.
When we arrived, it was obviously busy as carpark was overflowing and took us a while to park.
Although we were only 10 minutes before our booking time, were told they didn't have a table for us & the staff were quite obviously flustered.
We were asked to wait in the bar, which is tiny & we felt very in the way.
We were finally seated almost half hour after our original booking time. There were 5 of us + a dog & the table we had been put on was a 4 seater between two large groups with no room around it making it very uncomfortable as it was impossible to pull the chairs out to sit on them without bashing into the person sat behind.
5th chair was basically in the walkway past the bar & i spent the whole time having high chairs, trays of drinks + plates of food literally being carried over my head as there wasnt enough room for staff to walk behind me without doing so.
Service was extremely slow. We had to ask for someone to come & take our order after we'd been waiting ages & food arrived very staggered. This was particularly bad with desserts, we waited more than 30 mins to order dessert in the first place and had to hunt a staff member down to do so.
The first 2 desserts arrived & our table still hadn't been cleared from dinner. There was then a considerable delay before the next 2 desserts came out and by the time the 5th dessert arrived, everyone else at the table had already completely finished eating.
The staff seemed rushed, chaotic & grumpy & were quite clearly not happy in their work. It was difficult to get anyones attention when needed & we were left feeling like we were an inconvenience when we did seek out their attention to order our food or drinks. One waitress even huffed at me when we asked for a glass of water.
The food was really nice, very tasty & good quality + the pub itself has a lovely atmosphere + fab decor so its a real shame about the service & awful planning as its really letting them down.
They are trying to cram far too many people into what is quite a small space and are not managing tables effectively to keep things running smoothly. The kitchen can't cope with the volume of food orders with so many customers which caused the staggered delivery of food.
I would also say they need to put a limit on the size of group bookings. There was a very large group next to us and the space just isn't big enough for that size of group as it makes it uncomfortable for them but also for the other guests seated around them.
Some spaces just aren't suited to big parties of people and this pub certainly is one of them.
They also advertise that they are dog friendly, however do not consider space for the dog when allocating your table upon booking (dog and the need for floor space was mentioned when we booked but they didnt take this properly on board) so part of the kerfuffle with our table was because they had not allowed space for the dog and the original table reserved for us was not apparently not suitable which was disappointing and completely avoidable had proper thought been put in.
Overall our experience was very stressful and uncomfortable.
We would possibly try this place again on a different day of the week because the food was very good and the prices are reasonable considering the foods quality, but would never return on a sunday after our experience today.
If service and planning was improved, this could easily be a 5 star venue, theres so much potential for it but vast improvement required to get there.
