"Visited on a bright, November Thursday lunchtime with my parents. Have been coming here for years: this time was a shock. Menu has shrunk: now extremely limited and basic. Dad 's Ham Egg and Chips was okay, but just slices of processed ham, chips and 2fried eggs, without even a garnish pricey for that. Ma had liver and bacon: it was really good, esp the gravy and the mash; but ruined by the veg the green beans undercooked, and the carrots were absolutely raw. Shameful that there 's only one vegetarian main, and that it 's just a basic tomato and mozarella pasta; so I had that, but with olive bread. The home made olive bread was gorgeous I mean, really spectacularly good, small sticks, crisp on the outside, nice and soft on the inside, with just the right level of olivey flavour and richness. Which was just as well, as it 's all I ate. The pasta consisted of a bowl of overcooked, limp fusilli, sitting in a couple of centimetres of watery tomato sauce , with a layer of melted mozarella stuck to the bottom. The watery tomato tasted very strongly of dried herbs; and that was ALL it tasted of. It was far too watery and insipid to do more to the pasta than make it wet. The invisible cheese was only dredged up when I attempted to stir the dish, and stuck to my fork in strings so I had to wind it around and then scrape it off with my teeth to actually eat any of it. The entire dish was inedible: not just not very nice but, actually, really quite nasty. The waitress, who was lovely (the service today was as good as always , asked me why I hadn 't eaten the pasta to provide feedback to the chef , so I politely told her. I did not expect a response; but was informed a few minutes later by the, now a little uncomfortable looking, waitress that she had been asked to pass on that the chef ...had made the sauce herself and that she was ...sorry it was not to my taste . While perfectly obvious that she had ...made the sauce herself and how, I struggle to imagine who would be prepared to eat this disgraceful slop at all let alone find it tasty. I was really quite annoyed at getting this patronising, defensive response to an opinion I had only expressed because I was asked for it especially after a disappointing experience with the only main meal that I could eat off the menu. I struggled not to walk into the kitchen at this point and tell the chef to her face that, if this really is the best she can do, I would be happy spend ten minutes explaining to her how to turn a concasse of tomato into a simple, but delicious, pasta sauce; and how to then make an appetising basic vegetarian meal out of it. Though underwhelmed and disappointed (and annoyed and hungry, in my case , we pressed on to desert, which is usually excellent here. The Baileys ' Cheesecake was really rich and delicious, without being over sweet; the Lemon Meringue Roulade was good light and lemony; but my Ma thought its delicate flavour was overwhelmed by the sickly strawberry sauce drizzled over it. I 've had the bread and butter pudding here before and it is (was absolutely to die for literally the best I have ever tasted. This time, it turned out to be mostly dry pieces of rather tough white bread, layered with hard dried fruit, sugar and spices, sitting (inexplicably on a thin layer of revolting semi raw, pastry; with little evidence that any of it had seen much in the way of egg custard or butter. Again, not just not very nice but absolutely disgusting. At this point we decided to give up, skip coffee, and just pay and leave as fast as possible. They seemed pleased with themselves for not charging us for the inedible pasta; but there seemed little point in us mentioning the vile bread and butter pudding...as by then it was obvious that their (new? chef cannot actually cook at least, not to any decent, consistent, commerial standard but is also rather defensive about it. It 's a great shame, as when the food was good today, it was really excellent. But most of it was just ordinary and pretty bland; and when it was bad, it was truly terrible. Perhaps the chef was just having an off day who knows. In any case, we had travelled from Ipswich specifically to have lunch here as a treat; but after today, despite more than three decades of our family eating at the Black Boy when we visit this part of Essex, we will not be returning. I don 't suppose the chef will care, really, if her food is not to our taste ."
