Black Beech Wine Bar — Restaurant in Canterbury

Easily the worst food experience we’ve had in some time, possibly ever. We ordered cheesy fried cauliflower & broccoli bites but they were soggy, limp & tasteless. Disgusting. Cheesy Jalapeño bites were just cheese, not a sign of jalapeño & again, soggy & just gross. How you stuff that up is beyond me but the worst was still to come. We were a table of four adults & two kids. We ordered pizzas. Prawn, Moroccan Lamb, Smoked chicken & Cranberry & the Salmon Pizza. The bases were like microwaved cardboard & the toppings….the prawns were shrimp, and clearly frozen. The lamb was barely a few meagre slices on top of a weird yellow sauce, that barely covered the base & was from somewhere that definitely wasn’t Morroco. The worst though was the chicken. It was minced beyond any semblance of chicken & didn’t have any taste whatsoever, certainly not smoked! The cranberry was a thin, watery mess. I’m not exaggerating when I say this was the WORST pizza I have ever had. Between the lot of us we ate about 6 pieces, total, from the 4 pizzas, to make sure each of us wasn’t just making this up. I spoke to the lovely lady behind the counter & said I wasn’t happy paying for the prawn & chicken pizzas. These pizzas cost $30. For $30 it was an absolute joke. McCains or whatever random freezer microwaved rubbish you choose for $6 is by FAR much much better than what was served up. Seriously. $30. The chef/owner/senior staff member came over for a chat & I very politely aired my grievances regarding the pizza ( I didn’t even mention the other food) & was pretty much told ‘well that’s the way it is’. Another member of the staff walked over to point at the chicken pizza & say ‘we’ve made heaps of these & no one has complained yet’. We paid our bill & left behind an almost full table of food. Beyond terrible. I will add that it wasn’t busy at all, the place had hardly anyone in it & there seemed to be enough staff to cope. Not giving a damn & just cashing in on Oxford being a tourist drive-through? Seemed that way to us & two of us live 5 mins...

Minced chicken advertised as smoked chicken and cranberry ! Rubbish! Advertised prawns on pizza got small hard unchewable shrimps and yes we know enough to know what shrimps are! Unless they are mini mini prawns! Asked for morrocan lamb while flavour nice the lamb was the tiniest 5cm around the top nothing on the rest Talked to locals they say love the owners so don't want to say anything but they need to remove word Gourmet from the menu!! No one wants to say anything !! Come on!! Give real food and value for money Massively overpriced packet ingredients ! The Staff particularly the lovely young lady who looked after us was excellent...

stopped here for a light lunch and a meet-up with Grandma. On arrival, the main owner???? Was sitting at a table so left us to find our own seat before we realised we needed to order at the bar. No welcome or explanation given by serving staff. Once pizza ordered also some rather expensive soft drinks pizzas arrived in a good time, but on closer inspection, though larger, our honey cured ham and pineapple was no different to our sons, which was a lot cheaper. The kitchen staff did check in on our meal, which was nice. However, I would not revisit to be treated the same way by the unimpressed male...