The Red Lion — Restaurant in Cherwell District

The Red Lion has been a regular Sunday breakfast for us for a while. This Sunday was the first since the new owners. Service was excellent as ever, the staff are always enthusiastic & helpful.

We were, however, somewhat disappointed with the quality of the breakfast compared to how it used to be. The bacon was meagre, one rather small disappointing sausage with the space being made up with rather a lot of mushrooms.

Will probably be looking elsewhere for future breakfasts.

Had an evening meal with friends on a weekend, sadly disappointed.

The Nachos with chilli sharing platter was pretty mediocre. The chilli was pretty tasteless & very dry, it felt like it had been reheated many times, & the cheese didn't taste particularly fresh. I wonder if the Nachos had been pre-prepared & then reheated, I somehow doubt it was freshly made.

Followed by my main. Their burger. Had it before, many times. This particular one had a peculiar flavour & was quite dry, it just crumbled away as you tried to eat it. There was some bits of lettuce stalk, the white bits from the end of the leaf in there which wasn't pleasant. The bacon wasn't cooked evenly, resulting in it being rock hard on one edge & just about cooked on the other, & a rather thin, sad looking piece of tomato. I couldn't eat the burger, just unpalatable. They informed me that they no longer buy the burger in, its now made on site, with tarragon. Tarragon. Tarragon? What the...? Horrible. This doesn't excuse the rest of the burger being mediocre. I wasn't offered another main, although they took the burger off the bill. (I didn't complain about the Nachos). We will be looking elsewhere for evening meals,...

Disappointing. We arrived on a Tuesday evening in September as 5 adults with a pre booked table. We were late but I had rung ahead and advised so they were expecting us, we got there at 18.45. The Landlord advised they had a private function going on that evening in the garden so he wouldn’t be taking our order until 7.30pm to help the kitchen team. We got some drinks and chatted and after our prompt at 19.40 our order was taken. All the food for the garden event had gone past us and had been completed, but sadly we then waited over an hour to get our food order with no apology, no explanation, and no check up from the waiting team. The pub was now empty and we were the only ones left. The Landlord spent the evening complaining loudly about problems with the till, the engineer who hung up on him over the phone, the broken till in the garden and didn’t acknowledge or attempt to offer any drinks or an apology for the really late service. We had to go up to the bar and remind them we had ordered further drinks as they had forgotten. I am an ex Pub Landlord, and we had a Chef and two waitresses in our party, so we are all aware and forgiving of external events and large functions but we were all very unimpressed by the lack of contact from any of the team all evening. From arrival at 18.45 we actually got some food at 20.30 which is not acceptable. The table next to us commented how tolerant we had been before they left, which was telling. Our first visit to the Red Lion about six months ago was excellent, sadly we won’t be coming back...

Good little pub/restaurant, with good quality food and a reasonable menu choice. DOG FRIENDLY!!

Our visit was for food, and the service we obtained was typical of a restaurant, and felt as such without much the feeling of a pub. Atmosphere marked down for this as we were expecting less of restaurant atmosphere and more of a pub atmosphere. That being said, we didn’t explore the building and not sure if there is another section to it that would be for patrons.

In any case, staff were very friendly, and could not do any more, for that I would love to visit again.

Food itself had a reasonable menu, with specials boards. The quality of food again was on point, seems to be a Cotswold thing, as pubs I’ve gone into recently have been producing restaurant quality food, not typical pub grub. I had the Katsu chicken burger, which was something different and worked well.

Parking on site, and spacious area out the back in their pub garden.

I would definitely...