The Stag — Restaurant in Broadland

Me and my partner went to the Stag in Salhouse for a Valentine's Day meal. The pub itself is nice inside, however, the same cannot be said for its staff or its food. We ordered the prawns on garlic-covered bruschetta, which was very good and left us excited for our mains. We ordered the steak with peppercorn sauce (£33) and the steak and kidney suet pudding (£18.50). When the steak came out over half of the plate was covered in clearly frozen cooked chips, not the triple-cooked hand-cut chips as advertised. The chips were worse than Weatherspoon’s chips, they came out anaemic and extremely potatoey, which are not the kind of chips you expect with the price. The steak itself was undercooked, medium rare was requested but it was cooked just about to be on the rare side of raw. When raising this with our server she denied that it was undercooked for our liking and argued with us for two minutes, making us feel like we had never had a steak before. This hostile server eventually took our steak back, still in defiance, and we had to wait for over 7 minutes for it to come back out by which time the steak and kidney suet pudding was going cold. The peppercorn sauce that we had also ordered did not come out and had to be requested, this took 5 minutes to come out. To say the steak was a disappointment for the price point is an understatement, perhaps the owner could think about lowering the price to around £20-£25 then the steak would have been ok value. The steak and kidney suet pudding was not any better, the steak inside was chewy and hard to cut through, and much sawing was required to get through a sugar cube size of steak. The mashed potatoes that came with the pudding had the consistency of Playdough and again looked and tasted like it was frozen mash not creamy or soft and fluffy like good mash should be it also lacked all taste, not what you would expect. When giving our thoughts about the meal with our server she again was hostile and did not believe us when the evidence was in front of her. Before this, we had run out of drinks and no one came up to us to ask if we wanted anymore, as a pub this should be standard if you want to make any money, this shows a lack of care from the staff members. Also, after we had finished how meals and made it obvious that we had we had server after server walking past our table and ignoring us it took an exceptionally long time for the plates to be cleared roughly 10 minutes or so, in an empty pub. Adding on to the lack of service, when we said our food was poor the server said ‘why didn’t you raise this with me beforehand’. This was not possible because she didn’t come to the table and, we did not finish our food making it evidently clear that the food was awful. The server then again, after some persuasion about the poor standard of food, took our plates to show to the chef. After speaking to the chef who was adamant that the food was 'cooked to perfection' we were given the starter for free and the peppercorn sauce, totalling £13. However, the service at this pub was shockingly hostile and the food was just poor for the price, there was no care from the chef who had packed up for the night. I would not recommend this pub to anyone who wants to have a nice meal with good food with a nice server. After reading many reviews there seems to be a theme with them and that’s the poor service, if this pub wants to improve customer satisfaction then some courtesy from the staff would be a good start along with some care for the food, they are serving at an up market price tag Londoners would...

As others have said, we arrived 10 minutes before our booking, and were happy to wait at a high table with drinks until our table was ready. However, the people at our table would not leave, though the young server assured us that they had been asked three times. I find this hard to believe, but had to accept it. In the end, we were given a table in an outer room, which was entirely lacking in any atmosphere, and fairly uncomfortable, with glaring lights over the tables. This was an evening my husband's brother had planned for 4 of us, and had carefully booked it a week in advance. The servers are lovely, but very young and very inexperienced, and it seems there is little training given. We got our starters one hour after arriving, and when we ordered, a second server told us she had to see if the kitchen would in fact take our order right then, as they were 'backed up'. She came back and told us they would take it, and apparently we were to be very happy about this.. However, she came back 20 minutes later to inform us that our starters were now being cooked 🤷🏼

The starters were ok, though the scallops were tiny, and 3 of us had them finished in 5 minutes, while the 4th person struggled with her enormous salad and cheese fritters, more like a main than a starter. The main course I wanted had just sold out, and the server was apologetic about this, so I ordered red mullet on a bed of sauté potatoes with pancetta. We waited another 25 minutes for this course. My sister in law's fish crumble was dry, and had clearly been under a heat light for a while. My husband's prawn noodle dish was quite tasty, though there was far too much sauce for his liking. It was my red mullet that was shockingly bad. A piece of incinerated frozen fish, more bones than flesh, on top of a pile of burnt potatoes and charred pancetta (the same as were served with our scallops). This for £29. I couldn't eat it. In fact we all left most of our mains. When we were asked how the food was, I told the server that I couldn't eat mine. She assured me she would 'let the kitchen know'. I have no idea what that is supposed to achieve for a guest. I'm sure the kitchen is well used to hearing it by now, but nothing was done.

In the end, we were given our initial drinks free - the drinks that we only ordered because our table was not available - but nothing else was forthcoming, not even an apology for a ruined evening which embarrassed my husband's brother very much.

Cop on, Stag managers. These are local people who support your business, and I know for a fact that they will not be back. Increase the number of customers who won't be back, plus word of mouth, and what clientele are...

We decided on this lunch stop and was a more expensive end of what I would call pub food (£20 curry, £17 for fish and chips, £12 fish finger sandwhich). The food was nice but I was left quite dissapointed overall.

Both me and my eating partner opted for two pints of Hawstone IPA and a ciabatta fish finger sandwich. The beer was lovely and cold and just the job.

The meal came fairly quickly but was most dissapointing in size. The portion would have fit in the palm of my hand easily and the salad was fairly basic leaves with a dressing. The “fish fingers” were small fish battered chunks so if you were expecting fish fingers in the meal - not so. Having been elsewhere and indulged a fish finger sandwiches whilst it was artisan and looked posh, I was left wondering where the rest of my meal was.

Our final disappointnent was we asked if we could purchase the lovely Hawkstone glasses, and not just steal them. Knowing the pub trade gets these for free usually, we left this idea when told £10 each (£8.50 on official website). This was a minor thing but hey ho.

Shake really. The other meals maybe far more generous but our Friday lunch times probably won’t see us revisit here. Such a shame as it’s a lovely place inside.

Sorry. Have...