"Having read (mostly) good things about this place and wanting to try somewhere new, we were really looking forward to eating here. When we walked in, I immediately felt it was a lot louder than expected and could do with a clean. There were a...couple of groups of people in the pub being seriously loud as well far louder than the music or general atmosphere!! For a Thursday evening, that was pretty unexpected. The drinks were decent enough and the staff were perfectly friendly. They could definitely do with some more beers on tap especially in this era of being spoilt for choice by craft beer! When ordering at the bar though and also at our tables, there were a lot of fruit flies around which is never pleasant. When we went to order our food, we were irritated to find that there was no fish (so no fish and chips which half of us were ordering) and they couldn’t use the hob (so couldn’t cook eggs for the full English breakfast). Having read a lot of reviews saying that people had had problems with certain food items not being available, I was really hoping they would have sorted this out. Sadly not, so we were really disappointed. I think my father in-law was given some extra bacon as an apology, but sadly that doesn’t much make up for not being able to eat what we were after. Probably the most disappointing thing was when the food arrived. After reading one review about “great portions”, we were left wondering if we’d come to the wrong place. The portions were really small compared to other places like this. Granted they are cheap and they really are cheap but we would have much preferred to pay a couple of pounds more for a decent serving. I was pleased I’d ordered a side of cheesy chips, but even these were pretty lacking on the size!! The quality of the food really was good, so we had no complaints there, but we were just left feeling pretty hungry. As a result, we ordered a couple of big desserts. These were a pleasant surprise, as they were a really good size and again, they were really tasty. Of course, the pub can’t do a great deal about the clientele so can’t be blamed for that, but that would unfortunately put me off going back any time soon. It’ll sound really snobby reading this, but we are not snobs in the slightest!! We just don’t tend to enjoy places where people make a point to shout as loud as they can at people standing right next to them, looking to fight with every other person who walks past. Again, not the pub’s fault, but a shame. If they ordered more of a stock of the food that seems to be often unavailable and perhaps increased the portion sizes on certain dishes (even if that means increasing the prices slightly), we’d give it another chance some time. Sadly though, for our joint birthday celebrations, this probably was not the best place to choose!! Let’s hope for an improvement in future, and thanks to the staff for being more friendly than the other guests were!"
