The Crown — Restaurant in Birmingham

Visited The Crown at Four Oaks on Sunday 15 September 2019 for an evening meal having seen its entry in the Good Beer Guide. The Crown is set back on a corner site with a car park surrounding the front of the building. There are signs and pay meter telling people who are not-patrons of The Crown about the fee they have to pay. Visitors to The Crown sign in on a pad on the bar to make sure they do not have to pay. ( Otherwise it will be a fee of at least £1 per hour or a parking fine)

The Ember Inns pub has been modernised with a lower ceiling and a lot of high stool seating in about half the area. The large open 'Lshaped' customer area is centred on a long bar area with six real ale handpumps at the centre of the bar. The place is set up as a food pub although if you are drinking you are still welcome to sit at any table. . We had an average tasting drink of Tim Taylor Landlord for £4.20 a pint.

The menus, cutlery and sauces are housed in a small box on each table. We decided to eat and then had to return to the bar to place and pay for our food order. Three main meals ordered came to a very reasonable £33. The food was delivered to the table and was of good quality for the price. However when we had some puddings we were a little disappointed with the Belgian Chocolate Mousse ( £5.99) .The mousse was still partly frozen . The service was friendly but they were often missing trying to do other things ( possibly a little...

We booked a table at the crown pub for a father’s day meal. When we arrived, we were taken to a table of 6 even though we had booked for 8 people. We were told by the waitress that the bigger tables were taken. We were offered a smaller table which obviously wasn’t a solution. I asked why we were allowed to book a table of 8 if it wasn’t available and she just walked off with a bad attitude and never came back. We had to push the tables together and squeeze extra chairs on ourselves.

We went to the bar to order food snd virtually everything was unavailable. However, we gathered that the pub may have been busy due to it being Father’s day so chose something else.

Then came the 1 hour 20 minute wait. We wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt as again we gathered that they were busy. A waitress then came over and said that even more items were now not available. Why we were allowed to order them is beyond me. At this point it became clear that they hadn’t even started cooking the food so we asked for it to be cancelled and left. We went home and ordered a chinese!

The bizarre thing about the whole experience was the fact that non of the staff seemed to have a clue what was going on either. The whole thing was a complete shambles from start to finish. Terrible service and a total lack of organisation. I can’t comment on the food as we didn’t taste any in the hour and a half...

How this pub has got 4.1 stars is beyond me. The inside is dirty and outdated and quite dark and that was with us sitting by the window. We ordered the battered mushrooms which there was that much oil coming out of them we couldn’t really taste them, However my daughter did enjoy her soup. The mains myself and daughter had ham supposedly off the bone with egg and chip. The eggs were sluffy. and we sent both meals back as the ham was grey round the out side. I will give the server his sue he was well mannered and polite and sorted it for us by getting us another meal hence 3stars for service. We both had gammon but this was basically rushed on a grill and tasted burnt. My wife enjoyed her macaroni and cheese the only downside was the cold spring onion that was in it. As the pudding my daughter enjoyed her vegan cheesecake but mine and my wife’s was mediocre. The pub in general needs to stop living off its past reputation of years gone by and move with the times. This was a...