The Portsmouth Arms — Restaurant in Basingstoke and Deane

Been going to both Hall and WoodHouse pubs near me for years, Portsmouth Arms and Holly Blue, both are great pubs with super service and nice atmosphere.

The food though in both pubs in my experience can only be described as consistently dissapointing. And I've tried and tried experiencing their efforts at least a dozen times in the past couple of years. Not once has it even been better then ok. Always something wrong with them. Always disappointed and leave wishing we hadn't given them another shot.

Take today's meal ... it's making me gip thinking about it. Starters were BBQ chicken wings and chicken goujons. The goujons were ok, at least they were hot, still probably not as good as a serving of Bernard Matthews Turkey Twizzlers cooked in the oven at home but just about edible. The chicken wings however yuck yuck yuck - god knows how they cook the chicken, biting into them one could only assume they were boiled or steamed with such an unpleasant slimy texture, some of the wings had a fishy taste to them, the wings alternated in temperature, some hot and some luke warm, perhaps they where microwaved I don't know. Then to top it off a standard grade barely ok BBQ sauce is lathered over the top to mask the aboration. Awful.

Then the main course, it got worse. Kids Fish goujons and chips was great, clearly they'd been freshly deep fried and looked and tasted super. Unfortunately the beans accompanying came out in a ramekin looking about as dry and shrivelled up as if they'd come out of Tutankhamuns coffin.

Next up was Macaroni Cheese, billed as being gooey on the menu - it wasn't, it was dry, clearly overcooked and weirdly the portion size was tiny, I had to ask if it was off the kids menu - it wasn't.

Then steak and ale pie and chips, chips were ok but the pie again all dry and crusty.....on the inside!

I then had Sunday dinner, probably the worst Sunday dinner in the 45 years I've been on this planet. Absolutely I would of preferred to sit down to an Iceland £2 microwavable TV dinner - certainly would of been more succulent and tasty. The roasties were damp, the meat dryer then gandhis flip flop - every bite I had to swig down some lager to help it go down. Yorkshire looked nice but had no taste and texture like it's been made yesterday. This was all presented in a what can only be described as a lake of beetroot and gravy soup, it was horrible.

Hall and WoodHouse wake up, you've got an affluent and captive growing market surrounding your pubs. I know not one person around here that speaks kindly of the food you serve. It's such a shame cause both pubs and service provided are great it's a travesty really that the food is like it is. You are missing out on a goldmine, all you need to do is make high quality freshly prepared food and I'm sure you'll get all your covers booked out every night. Aim to be a Fat Duck instead of settling to be a poor...

Went there today (2021-12-30) to visit the Alpine Bar. We were really looking forward to this, sadly we were very disappointed. It’s almost as it they don’t know there is a pandemic going on. Okay, I will start with the good. The food was good, served quickly and plentiful. There was a good range and it was reasonably priced. There is an order at the table app, but that’s limited (okay, i’m struggling for goods) The bad. The table ordering service is only for the main food, I had to order at the bar for the Alpine bar food. This means when they don’t have the food or drinks on the menu you have to go back to the table to change the order. The Alpine bar is set up in a tent put up in the beer garden, but it’s so poorly laid out that the only place people can congregate to talk is at the doorway into the tent, so you have to force you way past people to get to the bar / your table. No sign of cleaning table between customers. When we were taken to the table the service person (the only one wearing a mask) just took the detritus of what was on the table and seated us there. Rather then spread out diners people are all packed together, we had to walk through an empty restaurant section to be seated in a busy tent. No knives or forks, not a deal breaker but no napkins either, so you end up with greasy fingers. I appreciate that the staff won’t want to police the mask mandate, it for goodness sake wear them as an example. I only saw one member of staff wearing a mask. This probably explains whey they have staffing issues and have had to put signed up about their closing early over the next...

Booked two weeks in advance but still found ourselves placed at a table right next to the toilets - great start! The roast was beef that day so I asked the slightly less than enthusiastic waitress if it was well cooked as none of us enjoy the pink, half cooked experience? She said she would ask for only well done meat to be plated. One of our group opted for the veggie parsnip cranberry nut roast. When the meals arrived, one of the plates of beef was so rare it was still mooing! The veggie option didn't arrive, they sent three beefs. Not sure if the fault was with the waitress for not passing the order correctly or the kitchen for just throwing anything on the plate and ignoring instructions. By this time I knew we had made an awful mistake but we were committed. Five minutes later, a slightly better cooked beef (but still not well done) and the nut roast arrived. Our side orders had been forgotten but came after another five minutes on request. The beef was OK - just OK. The roast potatoes were barely cooked - soft but hardly browned. The 'pigs in blankets' side orders were cooked on one side, pale white and fatty on the other and not particularly tasty. The nut roast was so overbaked it was literally inedible apart from the central 'core' which had no flavour of either parsnips, cranberries or nuts. The crust on it was so hard it simply could not be cut into - rock hard. The pub was by no means busy that day, maybe half full, so not sure why food like that was being dished up. Overall, it's a pleasant enough pub for a drink but they really haven't nailed the food...