Jekyll & Hyde — Restaurant in Basingstoke and Deane

Came here for a mother's day meal. Arrived on time at 3pm and seated straight away. It took 20 minutes and a bit of hanging around at the bar to get a waiter to come over and take the food and drink order for 5. There appeared to be plenty of staff working but we couldn't see them most of the time so I'm not sure what they were doing. The guy who eventually came seemed like a lovely chap but was one of those waiters who seems to think a pencil and paper is for wimps and tries to remember the whole order - always makes me nervous (with justification). Drinks turned up another 10 minutes later, and the jug of water that we requested for the whole table was barely big enough for 1 person. 2 of us had starters which were very tasty but then another long wait to get plates cleared away and get the mains. Eventually at about 4:15 the mains appeared - the 3 folks who didn't have starters were absolutely starving by this point. Unfortunately 2 of the 5 mains were wrong - one of our party was so hungry that he decided not to complain about it and risk another long delay, as did I when mine wasn't very hot. We all agreed the food was very good, but again it took an age to get the dirty plates taken away (you shouldn't have to stack them up at the edge of the table yourself) and get a pudding menu. Another lengthy delay before taking the pudding order meant we decided to cut our losses and leave rather than face another wait. The waiter seemed a bit surprised but was very apologetic when we pointed out the bad service, and gave the kind of "it's really busy today" excuse which isn't really good enough on Mothers day when everyone knows beforehand that it's going to be busy. Management either didn't get enough staff in, or didn't instil any kind of sense of urgency in them. We did notice several other tables around us appearing to have very long waits, and a few other cases of food being brought out to people who had ordered something else, so it wasn't just us having this experience. It's a shame because the food really is very good, but the organisation seems to be really poor and sitting there feeling irritated about crap service for 2 hours does not make for an...

Had a family meal to celebrate the passing of our step mum and step sister. Reading the menu the week before was ideal as there was plenty to satisfy most tastes. I decided on the BBQ chicken wings, the pork steak and cheese cake to finish. The chicken wings were nice, the pork steak was huge and when it came out, I didn't realise it was mine as it I thought more pork loin size. I then realised it said pork STEAK. There was quite a bit of fat on it but nevertheless, it was really tasty and not tough. The chips were so so and felt they were possibly reheated or had started to cool. The salad was ok but someone pointed out that feta should have been on there. The cheesecake was the best I've ever had. It was creamy, moist and really tasty. My wife and sister in law both chose a vegan salad starter. Strangely they had a longer wait while our party of 10 had 8 starters delivered but theirs didn't appear. Eventually it turned up but by then most of us had finished ours. My wife's salad was all salad leaves with a few, walnuts, figs and chopped onion. My sister in law mentioned how lovely her tomatos were. The sudden look between them told a story. The sister in law had tomatoes, capers and cucumber as well. Both should have had vegan cheese on it but that was missing as well. So it wasn't a good start for my wife.

She then had fish as her main course, which was lemon sole. It was very boney and she gave up eating it as it was hard going. Her profiteroles came, all two of them 🤦 and she liked that. When the bill came, we were charged for a full main meal on both salad starters, which wasn't correct and wasn't ideal.

No one came to ask if everything was OK and I know that my wife would be mortified to say no and unfortunately, all this was highlighted to me at the end as I would've spoken up.

The bill was over £450 and as we're down in Bath, it's unlikely we'll be back as I'd like to give them another chance to have a better meal. On the plus side, the pub is nice, toilets clean and the garden excellent. It sounds an awful review but we may have caught them on a busy afternoon, although it was a...

Oh dear, what can I say..? The good bits... The pub is in a really nice spot and is clean, with a warm atmosphere, it has a nice "Oldy Worldy" feel to it and is well located for easy access. The beer is good with a fair selection of real ales. There is a lovely big garden with plenty of room for the kids to run around and a large play area as well. But... We were a large family party, all eating and the food was a bit of a mixed bag, I must add that we were the first to order and there were only 3 other tables occupied by the time we ordered, so not at all busy. We had a mixed breadboard to share, as a starter and it was really unpleasant and we couldn't eat it. I told the waitress and they replaced it with a plate of garlic flat bread which was very nice. My wife ordered a veggie burger, for her main and the bun was burned so she couldn't eat it. The burger its self, I am told was very nice though. I ordered the "award winning signature" pie, which they forgot and when it did, finally arrive the chips were raw... so I asked them to replace them, which they did. The pie was brushed in a thick gravy so the pastry was a little soft and there wasn't enough extra gravy on the plate so it was a little claggy to eat, although it tasted OK. Everyone else was very happy with their food, mostly having the gammon, which did look nice. Over all I would say the menu lacked imagination and was very basic "pub grub" with enough errors for me to not wish to return. The main issue I had, as was mentioned by all in our party is that the staff did not seem to want to be there... Not one person smiled, once that I can recall and, although not rude, we did get the feeling that we were rather in the way. I think it speaks for its self that the pub was only half full on a Sunday Lunch time, so I can only imagine that others have had the same experience as us and I can safely say we will not return. There was not one, awful thing but the whole experience was less than average, so I cannot...