The Kings Head New Buckenham — Restaurant in Breckland District

First time for my Wife and I and we were checking it out for a potential Christmas day venue. Arriving, it's not immediately obvious where the front door is and we followed somebody in via the toilets!!! Once at the bar, we were met with a distinctly average greeting and ordered a drink. We explained that we had a reservation and were shown to the dining room. The table for 2 was tiny and poorly positioned, far too close to the adjacent tables. I physically moved the table just to get sat down. Anyone who likes or needs a little extra space is going to struggle. Slow service was the theme for the rest of the experience. Sunday lunchtime and therefore it had to be a roast dinner, once again it was slow to arrive. Plonked on the table with no offer of sauces or condiments. No return to the table to check how we were. Very slow to clear the plates after making it obvious that we had finished. After delivering a pudding menu, the slow approach continued and this time, we changed our minds and opted for the bill. Once again, after waiting several minutes, we had to ask for the card machine and eventually we paid for the meal. At this point, we made the difficult decision not to leave a tip.

The most disappointing part of the experience was that the food was actually very good indeed. Hot plates, hot food, plenty of it and all cooked very well. A really good size portion and very tasty. It was just delivered with such impersonal service where you were never made to feel truly welcome. Just a dining number. The decision is, it's not the place for us to spend a hard earned £70 per head on Christmas day. We may well return on a different day and give them a second chance. We all have off days right?? The 3 stars are for the exceptional food, get the service on point and it will be 5 stars...

Excellent food but slow service.

We booked a table for dinner at 6:30pm for 3 people. When we arrived at the bar we were served drinks very quickly and then ushered to our table just before 6:30pm.

Our order was taken fairly quickly but our dinner took a long time (about an hour) to arrive, in fact a table of 2 sat down, ordered, ate and left before we had our meal!

The restaurant was very busy due to an offer they had running but despite there being quite a few waitresses it was like we were forgotten. We we never asked if we wanted another drink so made the most of the 1 drink and bottle of water for the table!

The waitresses were very sweet but I think perhaps that was the problem, there didn't seem to be a front of house manager or someone supervising them. The service wasn't bad, we were just invisible and forgotten.

Our meals were lovely. Husband had haddock and chips and I had the salmon, both delicious. Despite the service I was still planning on leaving a tip but the waitress wasn't able to get the payment system to do this.

Please know the restaurant was lovely and food delicious, I'm sure the slow service is...

OK seems a bit of a contradiction but I'll explain. The food was great we had the 7oz Beef burgers which came in a sesame Brioche Burger bun with the normal lettuce, onion gherkins and tomato and a chilli jam. The burger was s sheer delight my only gripe would be the chilli jam had no kick! So tasted like jam with a burger. The twice cooked chips were light and fluffy and went down well. The pub it's self seemed warm and dog friendly unforutnatly one of our party was alergic to dogs this is not mentioned. A Dog was also allowed to sit on a chair at one of the tables near us. I know this is not the fault of the pub but I think the staff could have told the owner to remove the dog from the chair as it did start licking the table at one point. The picture of the bar on the website is not a true representation of how it was on the day we visited. It seemed more tables and chair making it slightly more crowded the chairs either had cusions or material covers unlike the plain wooden chairs in the photograph important fact if suffer...