Chestfield Barn — Restaurant in Canterbury

Photos provided. Visit date: 10th February 2024 I'm a local but had never eaten here before.

I had called before I went and asked specifics about the starter I wanted, so I knew that the chicken in the starter, was only seasoned with salt and pepper. But I was starving and I'm an ongoing victim of DA, so I can't always cook at home nor do I know how to due to my very abusive parents.

This is important in understating why I went to eat here. Also, I hadn't eaten the entire day.

There's no good food options in the majority of Kent. You have to go to London to get good options.

Chicken Skewers Bland chicken. Way less salt and pepper than I expected. Non existent basically. Think the total opposite of Chinese salt and pepper chicken. This was basically unseasoned. I thought the tzatziki would compensate for the bland chicken. The portion of tzatziki however is 4 times less than what it needs to be. Tiny. But nothing can compensate for unseasoned chicken. Incredibly bland dish. £9. For less than that price I can get a delicious Taco at Wahaca in London. I can't understand how they think anyone would like to eat bland food.

Barn Burger Bun is kinda dry. Weird bun too. Not your typical burger bun. Decent amount of beef. Crunchy around the edges of the beef which was a bit off putting. Kinda dry towards the end overall. I requested burger sauce which was provided free of charge on the side. It was pretty sweet. Didn't really like it. But nice of them. Meat tastes like its excellent quality.

Fries were pretty good. But some had a slightly undercooked texture. Sadly, what let this otherwise decent dish down, was both burger and coleslaw were too salty. Otherwise it's an OK dish, but for £15 there's needs to be more in the burger, like red onion rings etc. I was asked if it was OK, but I didn't want to complain as I was still hungry and I've had experiences before when complaining (I eat out a lot. In many places over the UK and Europe), where the manger comes out and is a vile person. You never know how the manager is at a place, and as an ethnic single male, eating alone, with no witnesses at the table, staff/managers take advantage of that to be vile.

It's not only staff. I've had members of the public be racist and vile towards me when I complained about food at a restaurant nearby. Not far at all from chestfield. Pretty much a local place. I filed a report to the police about that.

So I'm anxious about members of the public reacting negatively towards me too.

Because I'm a ETHNIC male, if I complain, it's viewed as an attempt to not pay for food. It's disgusting.

I've considered investing in a body worn camera. Moving on.

Coffee - Flat white OK. If quite bitter/strong which was unexpected for being a flat white. £3.80 Came with a little biscuit which was nice. Can get a much better flat white at Costa just up the road.

Chicken and bacon linguine I asked for no bacon but instead just chicken. Chicken was chewy. Overcooked I suspect. A lot of mushrooms were hard to chew or too rubbery to chew. No baby spinach. No Parmesan cheese. Overall this dish was pretty bad. Only OK flavor wise, and with much on the dish very chewy, taking an age to eat. £15.50 At the end AFTER paying, I did tell the waitress that chicken was too chewy. She said 'I'll pass it on to the kitchen'.

Staff were friendly. In particular the male waiter. I had a variety of staff attend my table over the course of the evening. It wasn't just the female on the receipt.

Only slight let down, towards the end of my meal, 3 or 4 female staff were chatting away with each other leaving me waiting for a while.

I asked for a hot drinks/soft drinks menu but was told they don't have one.

I've provided photos of the desserts menu. I didn't order any though. Decided not to.

Interior is calming and nice. Could do with more light directly over the table so food is well lit. Too dark to properly see the food.

Beautiful building from the outside.

For £43.30, I could have eaten elsewhere in London (not including travel costs) and have a delicious...

We live very near the pub but don't go often, nor do any of our friends who are local residents. During the day the clientele are often noisy lager-swigging types with badly behaved children. Our experience in the evening has been very variable, there seems to be a high turnover of chefs, the food has varied from excellent to dreadful. We have heard the present chef is good so we went for dinner to celebrate our friends wedding anniversary. Our table was under one of the loudspeakers and the music was rather loud. There was broken glass on the floor, apparently a previous guest at the next table had been brought the wrong drink and had thrown the glass at the wall. The staff had apparently removed him but clearly hadn't had time to clear up the glass.

Starters were excellent, very well presented and reasonable portion size. The main courses were ok, tasty and filling but the vegetables for one meal didn't arrive until about ten minutes after the rest of the food. We were told the chef didn't like the way they looked when they came out of the microwave and had started again. They were still of very poor quality and didn't arrive until the rest of the food had been eaten. Our complaint was not handled well, just an apology without an offer to take that meal off the bill or provide any alternative compensation. Sadly we've experienced very late arrival of some of the order here before; getting everything to the table at the same time is one of the most basic requirements of catering and it's disappointing they still can't do this.

The cheese board was excellent, plenty of cheese of good quality and variety. We received small glasses of complementary port with the cheese. If this was intended to compensate for the late arrival of poor quality vegetables it was a nice gesture, but it wasn't explained.

I'm a big fan of Shepherd Neame, but sadly this pub never has any of the seasonal ales. Looking around, most of the customers were drinking lager so perhaps there's not enough demand for real ale here. I asked for an island malt at the end of the meal and was told they only had Jameson or Bushmills, on reflection they probably thought I had asked for an Ireland malt, an understandable mistake given how loud the music was.

We will continue to avoid the pub during the day, but apart from the dreadful vegetables the food was good and we will try an evening meal there again.

Additional information following feedback from the pub.

No we don't come often, perhaps three or four times a year which is enough to know what the place is like. You only have to walk past in the summer to see and hear the clientele in the garden.

The assistant manager told us "the chef didn't like the look of the vegetables when they came out of the microwave". All four of us heard him, if he has told you a different story I suggest you talk to him about it.

People sitting at an adjacent table warned us about the broken glass and told us what had happened, and we did not say there was no need to clear it up.

Yes, the assistant manager did take the meal off the bill after we refused to pay for it. He should have offered to do this in the first place given that the vegetables didn't arrive until the rest of the meal had been eaten and were of poor quality when they eventually arrived.

When we moved back here there was a very high turn-over of chefs, one of our neighbours worked in the kitchen and confirmed this. I am pleased to hear that this is not now the case, but that makes me wonder why the food is sometimes very good and sometimes very poor.

I take exception to the accusation that I have "fabricated" content of this review. I have taken the trouble to give detailed accurate feedback, if you would rather accuse me of lying than address the issues I've raised it won't help your business, which is a...

Really shocked at how badly this place has slipped in such a short time. We arrived (as I booked in advance for my mums birthday) and the place was empty apart from the staff and few drinkers at the bar, and was ignored by 3 staff....to the point I had to go to the bar and say I was booked for dinner (no meet and greet, no "hi", nothing). Then, when it came to ordering we were left waiting for 25 minutes IN AN EMPTY RESTAURANT while the staff faffed around with chairs and cutlery on tables that were already set and laid....when the food did arrive it was bland, stodgy and over priced. Ordered the Haloumi skewers for starters @ £7 and literally x2 5cm skewers came to the table with 5 tiny squares of cheap, nasty haloumi on them. I ordered the lamb curry for main meal and it was like the sauce was on rations. Described on menu with amazing flavours etc, I think I may have found more flavours on the sole of my shoe. Bland. And I had so much rice compared to sauce. The only nice thing was the naan bread. My daughter had the kids meal and had a chicken burger (burnt and solid to the point she took one bite and told me it scratched her throat when she swallowed) - really poor quality.

I really don't think we will be back there again - despite the great surroundings, great views and it feels cosy in the winter....the service was dire, the food was the drizzling sh*ts, and the prices are wild - think the Head Chef may want to take her name off that menu and not be so proud to be linked to it....just...