Black Boy Inn Four & Six Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Caernarfon

Honestly the Black Boy Inn was a bit of a mixed bag.||On the one hand you've got a fantastic location, the room we had was lovely, clean, spacious and definitely great value.||The staff on the reception were lovely and very helpful and communication from the hotel prior to our visit was great.||Then on the other hand the restaurant was overpriced for what the food was, which was at best mediocre.||I'm not a food snob by any means however what they were serving was essentially the same sort of food that I could have got at the Wetherspoons down the road but twice the price as well as charging between £5 and £8 for a pint.||||The room we stayed in was excellent, very comfortable bed, unusually there were loads of plug sockets in convenient places which is a welcome relief compared to other hotels that we've stayed in, the tea and coffee facilities were well stocked and the bathroom was clean with a fantastic shower that I honestly could have stayed in all day.||||We stayed at the Black Boy as we were visiting the Welsh Highland Railway the following day and tit was conveniently located for being able to visit the castle on the day we arrived with a walk around the town in the evening and being able to walk down to the station in the morning.||||Just to clarify, the food wasn't bad as such but it was definitely not worth the price that we paid for it. ||To put into context, we stayed at a hotel called the Swan Hotel in Stafford last year and the food there was a similar price point but absolutely fantastic quality and that's been the same case for a number of places that we've stayed.||||We both had the Welsh Rarebit as a starter as I'd not had it for a while and my partner never has, what I got was actually closer to cheese on toast and before anyone says that's essentially what it is my point is more that it didn't taste like Rarebit, there was a very small amount of mustard in there but there was very little else that either of us could taste as there was no taste of ale or Worcestershire sauce anywhere.||||My partner had the famous Welsh Pie which she said was nice but nothing special and a bit bland, the cheese on top of the mash did most of the heavy lifting with regards to the taste and the mince in the filling was quite fatty with the filling in general having a distinct lack of seasoning.||The gravy was watery and pretty much tasted like instant granules being pretty much tasteless however rather salty.||||I had the Mixed Grill with a side order of peppercorn sauce and it was rather underwhelming and I could have got something that was better at Wetherspoons.||I ordered the steak rare and it came medium which isn't a massive concern to me as long as it's not well done and as the steak was quite fatty it helped render down some of the fat running through it (I suspect it was possibly a ribeye and not a rump) there was no seasoning on any of the meat so the steak especially was bland however the meat overall was well cooked, the sausage was probably the best thing on the plate.||The black pudding on the mixed grill was nice however it was only cooked on one side so it was a bit odd.||The peppercorn sauce was also quite disappointing, again very watery and quite bland with a lot of quite hard pink peppercorns in there, generally with a peppercorn sauce through the cooking the peppercorns will soften, it seems as though with this someone had not bothered to do that and had also forgotten that you need to actually grind or crush some pepper into the sauce so it tastes of something...and if it wasn't made on site then i'd suggest changing supplier.||||The menu stated that the chips on the meals were something called scrappy chips...we honestly had no idea what that meant but assumed it to mean that they were home made and a bit more rustic but honestly they seemed like frozen chips and there is absolutely nothing wrong with frozen chips but it's a bit misleading to call them something else...this may have been an issue on the day that we went and perhaps they'd had to buy externally instead of making them in house, I don't know and the menu doesn't state one way or the other but they were nothing special.||I'd also swapped my chips for fries for an extra cost which were undercooked and soggy...again I assumed when i ordered that the extra cost was due to them making their own chips but buying in fries instead so would slightly more but I'm guessing not.||||We'd ordered through the app so ordered desserts at the same time as everything else and whilst we were waiting for the desserts we were speculating on whether they would be home made or from an external supplier, my partner had the chocolate fudge cake which most definitely wasn't home made and I had the sticky toffee pudding which i'm pretty convinced also wasn't as there wasn't much in the way of dates in there and it was again a bit bland but I could be wrong, the desserts were alright, again nothing special but the custard was cold.||||As I've said previously, the food wasn't bad, I've certainly eaten in worse places, I've got no issues with food being brought in instead of being made on site as it's a way of ensuring quality and consistency as well as being more cost effective because it saves on labour, prep and cost of ingredients etc. but my issue was really with the pricing as it was essentially just pub food that was of similar quality to Wetherspoons or any other branded pub but priced like a restaurant and when it's priced the same as a restaurant I would expect the same...

What an absolutely letdown the restaurant was! My partner and our two sons (10 & 12) stopped in for an evening meal while on holiday in the area. It felt like I had to give my whole life story including taking a selfie to get on the wifi and sign up for the app to order on. We ordered a medium Yorkshire pudding with sausage and mash, ploughman’s, chicken and leek pie and a buttermilk chicken burger. The Yorkshire pudding was over cooked and my son couldn’t cut through it. The chicken burger was really dry inside and mayo didn’t taste nice. Chicken in the pie was chewy and the chips were like day old ones that had all the potato taken out of them. The cheese on the ploughman’s had very little flavour, even the blue cheese. We spent £87 and all 4 of us left at least half our meals. At no point did anyone ask us if we were enjoying our meals. When my partner did get up to complain, she was led to see the manager/owner who was really dismissive and walked off half way through my partner explaining what was wrong. At which point he made clear we wouldn’t be getting a refund and that they would have a meeting the following day to discuss our complaint. Today we received an email trying to gas light us by saying that they had served over 500 meals and no one else had complained about the chips and the rest of the compliant was ignored. They have offered a £30 gift voucher but since our experience and not still being in the area, this is completely useless. We definitely won’t be going back and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone we know.

Update following owner reply:-

The fact that you are having to go through my past reviews and deflecting back on to us says a lot more about you than it does us.

All you had to say in the night we can in was “I’m really sorry you haven’t enjoyed the meal, is there anything we can do to put that right” but you were only half listening and not interested in our experience.

I never once said the app was hard to use but commented in the fact it wanted a lot of information to get on line and then to register for the app. Usually this only asks for an email but yours seemed to want a lot more.

vegan and vegetarian options are a lot better but to a child may taste greatly different hence the comment about it not tasting right. A learning point for yourselves may be to put a disclaimer on the menu to say that some products have been substituted for vegan and vegetarian options so that people are aware.

not sure how far back you had to go to find a comment of me liking fries but that couldn’t be further from the truth. My last two food reviews were for pub food where I had decent chips and a chip shop where again I had chips and not fries.

we were ignored! Whether that was because of your attitude or being short staffed, but neither of them is caused by the customer or an excuse for poor customer service when faced with a complaint.

I don’t need any more of your past work experience or your suppliers contact details as this review is based on our experience in the place where you currently work and on the food that was served to us and not how the suppliers sent it to you.

I hope you take this as constructive criticism and learn/move on as...

We went to this place because it looked odd on the outside, and frankly, it was the only place that seemed open. The inside was gorgeous and reading the history while eating lunch, which was somewhat the name. The lunch was great and i had buttermilk sandwich and my husband had chili and rice. The food was great.

I copied the history here for you.

The Black Boy Inn (or just Black Boy) is a hotel and public house in the Royal Town of Caernarfon in Gwynedd, Wales which is thought to date back to 1522, making it one of the oldest surviving inns in North Wales. It is within the medieval walls of Caernarfon, a few hundred yards from Caernarfon Castle.

Name

Prior to 1828, the pub was known as the 'Black Boy'. Though still referred to by its traditional name, it was officially altered to the 'King's Arms' and, later, the 'Fleur de Lys', until a change of ownership led to the restoration of the old name and the creation of the "Black Boy Inn" as it is today. The Inn signs each show a 'black buoy' on one side and a 'black boy' on the other.

The Inn's name has caused controversy and there are at least three theories to explain its name. One is believed to come from a 'black buoy' which existed in the harbour in the early days of the Inn. Another refers to the nickname given to Charles II by his mother Henrietta Maria of France because of the darkness of his skin and eyes, as well as the fact that Royalists met at the Inn secretly at that time.  Later, the place became the local fishermen's favourite drinking place and the name of ‘black boy’ may come from this period.

History

Sketch of the early Black Boy Inn

In Caernarfon's heyday as a port-town, Northgate Street – on which the Black Boy Inn is situated – was the heart of the red-light district. Northgate Street's Welsh name Stryd Pedwar a Chwech translates to "Four [shillings] and Six [pence] Street": what the sailors are reputed to have paid for a room, a bottle of gin, and the services of a woman for the night.

The 'North Gate' archway found at the end of Northgate Street was added in or about the 1820s. It was designed to help facilitate the flow of traffic in and out of the old town, and is not part of the original town wall design.  Prior to the 'North Gate' archway, a census carried out in 1794 revealed this street was commonly referred to as 'Black Boy' street. The earliest reference to the "Black Boy" can be found in Caernarfon's archives dated 1717, a Deed of Sale of a house in "Street Y Black Boy" between Thomas Wynne, Glynllifon and a Henry Robyns.

The ghost of a nun is said to pass through the inn on her way to a nunnery that was once situated at the rear.

The pub has been listed as Grade II, being a rare surviving 17th century building in Caernarfon that still retains some original...