Boys Hall — Restaurant in Ashford

I returned home to eat and felt so much better after an omelette! Not what you’d expect after a £100 meal.

The menu was interesting & dietary requirements accommodated. Note main dishes are unaccompanied you have to pay (£5.50) for each side dish.

The setting is glorious, the sun shone, flowers bloomed and you feel transformed.

The lady on front of house was lovely as was our very helpful waitress, sadly the food is not good and let’s everything down.

Everything we ordered, everything! tasted of vinegar; the apple sauce on the pork (£28) the cabbage, the salad. The chefs unnecessary heavy handedness with this condiment masked individual flavours & as opposed to enhancing the food ruined it.

The chicken (£24) was undercooked, tough, pink (verging on bloody) and inedible, with a struggle I successfully tore a small portion of flesh from the bone but left the remainder untouched,

We shared 2 sides, cabbage with red onion and crushed new potatoes The new potatoes were good, however the chef needs teaching how to cook cabbage, it’s accompanying red onion was essentially picked onion.

The pork’s apple sauce was powdery tasting, our first thought was maybe a ground flavouring had been used and not cooked off sufficiently prior to fluid being added and the sauce thickened, regardless, it was unpleasant.

I have 30+ years experience of home cooking from scratch, my father, a professional chef taught me the basics and in my assessment the food left a lot to be desired.

The waitress noticed the uneaten chicken and tried to give good service, she returned the plate to the kitchen and came back with an offer of one free dessert- I declined - once bitten, twice shy… She said she’d talk to her supervisor and see what she could do, after a time she presented the bill, the chicken was included at full price

For 2 drinks, 2 mains, 2 sides and a bottle of water they expected us to pay £97 , I had only eaten a slice of cabbage and a few tiny new potatoes!

A glass of wine averages £10-16 a glass. We paid £12.50 for a glass of Italian red and £10 for a non alcohol drink Water costs are used for good and we didn’t object to paying £1.50 per bottle of filtered still tap water.

We refused to pay for the chicken but had no objection to settling the remainder of the bill including service.

The staff had another discussion, represented the bill with the chicken removed. The waitress who handed us the final bill (not our server) was not a happy bunny, clearly profit is more important than good food, happy diners and returning custom

We won’t recommend Boys Hall, which is a shame as we’d gone...

We booked in for the Lobster & Steak evening on 19th August. ^ of us booked for 6.45pm. We arrived, told the (very good) bar staff in the "pub" we'd come for this particular thing and were asked to wait for 20 minutes because we arrived too early. No problem as we had done that so we could have a drink before, ordered drinks and sat down. At around 6.55 we we taken to our indoor table (bear in mind this was supposed to be an evening on the terrace with the food being grilled for us), no explanation as to change of venue and we were seated with menus for the normal service , being told that this was in case we wanted any "extras". Orders were taken for wine and nothing else. We were then asked for our "extras" orders about 10-15 after that - we asked for bread and olives and after a while we got those. That was it for a long time, during which we were asked if we wanted more drinks, people were coming in after us (at least 3 tables that we counted) and being served their lobster & steaks, nothing happened as far as we were concerned. Eventually at around 8.05pm we asked to see the manager. She was very apologetic, but said the kitchen were very busy and offered us a glass of sparkling wine as an apology. We pointed out not unreasonably that we'd already had quite a bit of wine which we were paying for and didn't then want sparkling wine on top of that. We just wanted our FOOD! At around 8.20pm we were finally served. The food was good although the side salad was a few leaves and that was it. Given that it was made clear when booking we had a set time at which we had to be seated, the excuse that the kitchen was very busy simply isn't good enough, particularly as people coming in after us were being served with the same things we'd specifically come for. Admittedly we were offered our desserts as a compliment to make up for the absolutely ridiculous time we had to wait and that was a good gesture but frankly, given that this was actually the second time myself & my husband had actually experienced this level of service when having dinner with friends who were actually staying at the hotel (we'd thought it was just a blip), we are most unimpressed and three couples local to the area are unlikely to want to eat at Boys Hall again. Highly...

We attended for a lunch on Sunday and first off what a lovely setting and an amazing refurb on a beautiful old building. The decor is lovely as are the grounds. Although there is a lot of wasted space outside. Hopefully the allotment area gets developed and they grow some real produce to use in the restaurant. The pricing was fair and the dinning area (inside & out was lovely); very comfortable chairs! Parking was easy in their car park. Unfortunately, the service was not so good. We say outside while we waited for our table and it took a very long time to get a drink, by which time we were ready to be seated. We were then seated and had to wait an age for the menus, in the end we had to ask for them to be brought over to us. Service was generally slow. The staff were notably all very young and were not attentive. One plopped the food on the table and rushed off. One brought over a dish describing it as something completely different resulting it returning to the kitchen and then reappearing. They were all pleasant enough but the service definitely needs refining. The food was good overall and at a fair price. Although the menu was different to what we had seen online so were disappointed we couldn’t have the “Sunday lunch”. It was advertised as 3 courses for £38 which we thought was great value. I very much like that they are trying to experiment with the food and be different but again some refinement is required. The lamb was lovely and tender but there was not enough for two people to share, as described. It was served on a plate with a selection of Mediterranean vegetables which were tasty and well cooked. However, it lacked some sort of sauce. It was £24 per person just for 4 slices of lamb and some vegetables to share. The potatoes were very nice but were extra. The cod was very nice however, one of the party received a very nice large piece of cod and the other person received a very small piece! The deserts were okay but the soufflés were cooked too quickly and so were scrambled egg at the bottom. They had sunk on arriving at the table, they were pretty empty and a little on the tart side. The place has a lot of potential and I hope it carry’s on improving with...