Peacock Inn — Restaurant in Bromsgrove

Went for a meal here on the Saturday evening just gone. Our local Chef & Brewer is the Drum & Monkey but we have always liked visiting The Peacock. This is the fourth time we have visited now & each time there has been an issue, which is a real shame (I’ve not written a review before).

We booked a table for 7pm and upon arrival was shown to table & ordered some drinks - so far so good. Whilst we waited for these drinks to arrive, we overheard another table ordering the gammon. This table were informed by the waitress that they had ran out of gammon & two other dishes. When the same waitress came back to take our food orders, I ordered the mixed grill. I did wonder if this would be an issue, due to the mixed grill containing gammon - but nothing was said. I thought maybe the oz gammon is different for the mixed grill maybe?

About 15 minutes later our waitress came back to our table to inform me that they had ran out of gammon & asked if I would like to see the menu again to choose something different. I presumed I would be offered another item from the mixed grill in place of the gammon, instead of ordering a completely different meal? My other half asked if I could have another chicken breast instead of the missing gammon - but the waitress said she wasn’t sure if this could be done & that she would check. Some time passed and she came back to tell us the swap would be fine & was all sorted.

Food eventually came, which tasted fine. We ate our meals and ordered the bill. I paid part balance with Tesco club card points and the rest by card. I should have checked the receipt before paying but afterwards we noticed we had been charged for the chicken breast? At £3.50?! We queried this with the waitress whom apologised & said a refund couldn’t be issued because of the Tesco points. The only method of resolution was to pay the balance again & they would somehow cancel the first transaction (which is still pending in my account currently) and give us a round of drinks for the difference. We didn’t really want another round of drinks but took the offer to avoid any issues/animosity.

The previous couple of times we attended before this particular evening we were informed multiple dishes had sold out, why were we not informed of this before attending? The one time they had ran out of vegetarian dishes completely & when I asked what my other half could have as a vegetarian - we were informed “there’s a salad?”. It’s a shame as we really like The Peacock, the setting is lovely also but other Chef & Brewers seem to be faultless...

Ok let’s start Mothers Day booking 1st we were taken to our table location being cold I asked the staff if the heating was on to which I was told the heating was on but I noticed all the radiators near our table were off so with this I actually stayed with my coat on throughout the 2 hours of our stay

We ordered drinks and were told they didn’t have the red wine my wife wanted ?

We then ordered our starters and main meals of a 3 course Mothers Day menu. Having waited approx 50 mins for our starters which were acceptable at best, then came our Main course meals which were generally average the risotto was very dry and prawns dried out of texture as they were over cooked For my Sunday dinner I actually had to ask the member of staff for a Yorkshire pudding which the waiter apologies that it had been missed However, I can’t believe someone would leave the kitchen and not know a Yorkshire pudding wasn't on the plate ( very strange) The portion of stuffing on my plate was so hard I couldn’t actually cut it or eat it and I would describe it as a possible tooth breaker I have never known anything like it and once again how did that not get noticed by the kitchen staff serving up and how did it leave the Kitchen this is simply unbelievable.

The vegetables of my Sunday dinner were very poor with flaccid carrots and parsnips the roast potatoes had it seem been cooked earlier then microwaved to serve. After the main course we were told of the 5 or 6 dessert options only 2 were available this was at 2:30 pm god knows what the availability for those waiting for tables after us was but embarrassing for the staff to inform clients I bet Due to the limited choice or choice of only two dessert options noting one of the desserts without the caramel sauce we asked for a two course option to which the Manager agreed and charged only for a two course menu Having owned a F&B establishment for over 14 years it was clear to me The Peacock was under staffed poorly portion managed and basically out of control on our visit which seems strange as numbers would have been know prior to the opening of the doors due to people booking in advance and the knowledge of what to expect on Mothers Day My conclusion would be to our visit my gut feeling was The Peacock was under staffed and under stocked...

Having been to a chef and brewer restaurant in Dorridge, and the experience being excellent, we were all looking forward to a meal here. However the evening ended up full of bad experiences. It seemed as if the restaurant was thoroughly understaffed, with just one lady running round taking orders and bringing food out, which was probably the main factor leading to such poor service, so not entirely the fault of the employee herself, but still none of the interactions with any of the staff were pleasant at all. Starters were nice enough and out in a timely fashion. I had ordered a raspberry soda from the soft drinks menu, as I was driving home afterwards, only to find out that the receipt afterwards showed that I’d supposedly been given ‘Vodka Hard Sodas’ and when another member of our party disputed this while I was outside, the server was adamant this was what I had ordered. The drinks had originally been dumped on our table without being told what any of them where, so we had no way of knowing what was what and we just distributed them as best as we could. The drink I had didn’t seem alcoholic, but if they’d taken the effort to say what the drinks were, we could have resolved that issue straight away. Besides myself then driving home not knowing about the alcohol I’d apparently consumed, the server refused to change these drinks on the receipt to what I’d actually ordered. We then had to attempt to flag down the only server about to ask for our mains order to be taken after waiting for ages. Then the mains show up and one persons chicken was very over cooked, two meals that came with thick chips were close to being raw potato, all the steaks were very mediocre and gristly, beef burger dry, onion rings and skinny fries were alright. We were offered and accepted replacements for some of these but they never turned up. Second drinks order took about 30 minutes before we had to again flag the server down and ask when they were coming, to which she then went and and told the staff behind the bar sat on their phone to finally make the drinks. Overall just a very unpleasant experience for what was meant to be a night of celebration for one of our...