The Castle Inn- Pub & Dining — Restaurant in Borough of Runnymede

Probably the worst Sunday roast experience I have ever had, which is really disappointing given it is 1 of only 2 pubs in the immediate area.

We arrived at about 4.30pm on a Sunday afternoon, and the alarm bells were ringing from the off as there was only one couple dining when we got there. I've not known a single other pub in the area that isn't rammed every Sunday afternoon without fail.

The choice of roasts was very slim - beef, chicken and turkey "roulade" and a veggie option. We stupidly went for the roulade, and had to get it for our 2 year old daughter too as there was such a limited children's menu. Think burger and chips, nugget and chips or roast. There's clearly a reason they don't have the kid's menu on their website.

All 3 meals came out together, and I kid you not, the children's roast was the same size as the adult's roast! They tried to claim they'd given more to our daughter rather than not give us enough, but the evidence was there for all to see. 3 tiny uncooked floury potatoes, 2 mushy thin overcooked carrots, 2 undercooked stems of broccoli (quite how they managed to undercook one veg and overcook the other is beyond me), 1 large uncooked Yorkshire Pudding (yes they managed to undercook a Yorkshire!!!), and 2 coaster size stringy "roulades" of chicken and turkey. Even worse than all this was the gravy - thick, salty and from a jar of granules (basically like the stuff you got at school). No meat fat or juices had gone anywhere near this gravy. On top of this, even though the plates were hot, the food was tepid. To be fair to them, when my wife asked for more potatoes, they brought some out as well as carrots and broccoli, but they were all still either undercooked or overcooked (see above) so weren't particularly edible. They also brought our daughter's food out on the same size plate as us with huge cutley even for an adult (she's 2 year's old). I had to help feed her because it was impossible for her to do herself.

Annoyingly I forgot to take any photos because we were so annoyed that the food was inedible that we left as soon as we could. But there are numerous other reviews stating the same things that provided photos of how poor the roast are.

A group of 4 came in afterwards, and were shown a specials board that we didn't even know existed. Not that I can imagine they would have been particularly special...

When my wife went up to pay she did state she wasn't going to pay for all the food because of how bad it was (and to be fair, we didn't exactly eat much of it as it just wasn't edible), and they at least weren't too defensive about it. I think the waitress/barmaid did try to say that the roasts did match a certain weight that they were required to be, but I don't believe that at all (that, or the minimum weight isn't worth the paper it's written on).

I used to enjoy seeing the effort the pub used to go to when they organised certain nights of specific cuisines and entertainment. I'm not sure if management has changed since then, but they can't even get the basics right now. It honestly felt like the chef had never cooked a roast before in their life, or were doing it blindfolded - this should be a British pub's bread and butter on a Sunday.

I do remember about 2 years ago, my wife and I went in for lunch on a Friday, and we had some lovely Thai food. Sadly the whole experience we had recently has confirmed why we only went back once in between that, and all I remember from that visit is that we were charged something like £4 for a coke!

I've just noticed that the pub has a hygiene rating of 2 out of 5 stars. Yet another reason to give it a miss!

Edit: I've since noticed that they had a 0 out of 5 hygiene rating in November 2024, and currently out 1 out of 5 in June 2025! So yeah, still...

Thought we’d have Christmas lunch out for once and booked at The Castle Inn. It was surprisingly very quiet for Christmas Day, and now I understand why. We waited almost 40 minutes for starters which were served lukewarm at best. When the mains finally arrived we declined the food, and asked the waiter for the drinks and starters bill to settle and leave. £100 a head for the three course meal, and what we were served looked like a microwave meal for one (see attached photo). Dry (probably why it was saturated in gravy), bland, and unsophisticated. In line with this, we saw one of the serving staff bringing in a load of food from the car park including Tesco’s Christmas Pudding. Very disappointing as we’d heard great things about this venue. We will not be returning, and do not recommend. The icing on the cake was the owner coming out and being incredibly aggressive towards my husband, invading his personal space whilst swearing at him.

Edit to respond to comment by establishment: nobody paid us for our honest review, what a bizarre comment. We were in a rush to leave because (a) the owner was being aggressive, swearing at my husband and (b) our 7yr old daughter was stood crying at the door as she was hungry after a huge wait for sub-par food.

The staff member did not bring the Tesco food in bags, the products were in clear view for all customers to see. Perhaps use opaque bags next time supermarket food is being served for £100 per person.

We witnessed a guest from another party were also complaining during our time on site.

Instead of avoiding accountability by deflecting with ridiculous suggestions of a family being paid on Christmas day to sabotage their meal for a “fake review”, I suggest taking the feedback on board and doing better. Food and service issues aside, swearing and being so hostile to guests when you received no such behaviour from us is quite frankly, unacceptable. I notice you said nothing to dispute that....

We looked online for a place to meet family midway over Christmas, travelled about 2 hours to get here. First impressions were good with nice building and parking easy. The team were ready for us, very nice with lots of smiles and speedy on the first drinks. However I'm afraid I wouldn't recommend coming here for a couple of reasons. Most of our party had the steak sandwich which was very disappointing and in some cases the meat was so poor it was inedible. The toilets were from another era, filthy old dark and cold, frankly disgusting. Finally the team seemed to have a visit from an area Manager / Owner whose presence was very unwelcome. He looked angry, unpleasant and was berating the team in front of us. Basically taking no notice of his customers, literally telling the team to reduce portion sizes, manage drink levels, conversations that should never be had in public. This was before we ordered and had we not travelled so far to meet distant family we would have left immediately. Other than the lovely service from a willing team I could never recommend a visit here in the knowledge that higher management were so blatantly ignorant and clearly couldn't care a less about their customer or the...