José Pizarro The Swan Inn — Restaurant in Elmbridge

I was pleased to see that Jose Pizarro had a pub with a few rooms. I love Spanish food and it was a chance to get away for a couple of nights. Esher is relatively easy to get to from London, just a few stops on the train from Waterloo and 10 minutes walk from Claygate station. I was lucky to be able to get Room 2, which is the largest of the rooms available in a small block at the back of the pub. It was very clean. No great view and there was a bit of noise from traffic first thing in the morning - and on one day at about 8am when a big lorry arrived to bring barrels of beer. The room was very good, clean and fairly minimalist. The bed was a medium sized double and very comfortable - it made me realise that I need to change mine at home! The shower room was excellent and the towels were very fluffy. Coffee facilities were available. I had problems getting the channels I wanted on the television, but maybe that's just me! I often have this problem, so maybe it would be good if brief instructions were available. Before I went down to Esher I wondered whether ironing facilities were available. The pub's own website only says that one of the rooms has ironing facilties and this was not Room 2, so I made sure that my t-shirts were ironed at home - only to find an iron and ironing board in the corner of the room. ||The website also doesn't say that breakfast is included. There's a reasonable choice and I had the Big Breakfast, which consisted of toast with butter, bacon, a sausage which was described as Catalan, a grilled tomato, some baked beans which were not just straight out of a tin, mushrooms and a couple of beautiful poached eggs. I will never be able to get my own poached eggs to look the same as theirs! The coffee and orange juice were both good.||Apart from breakfast, I ate in the restaurant three times - once for lunch and twice in the evening. I'll do a separate review for...

I was pleased to see that Jose Pizarro had a pub with a few rooms. I love Spanish food and it was a chance to get away for a couple of nights. Esher is relatively easy to get to from London, just a few stops on the train from Waterloo and 10 minutes walk from Claygate station. I was lucky to be able to get Room 2, which is the largest of the rooms available in a small block at the back of the pub. It was very clean. No great view and there was a bit of noise from traffic first thing in the morning - and on one day at about 8am when a big lorry arrived to bring barrels of beer. The room was very good, clean and fairly minimalist. The bed was a medium sized double and very comfortable - it made me realise that I need to change mine at home! The shower room was excellent and the towels were very fluffy. Coffee facilities were available. I had problems getting the channels I wanted on the television, but maybe that's just me! I often have this problem, so maybe it would be good if brief instructions were available. Before I went down to Esher I wondered whether ironing facilities were available. The pub's own website only says that one of the rooms has ironing facilties and this was not Room 2, so I made sure that my t-shirts were ironed at home - only to find an iron and ironing board in the corner of the room. ||The website also doesn't say that breakfast is included. There's a reasonable choice and I had the Big Breakfast, which consisted of toast with butter, bacon, a sausage which was described as Catalan, a grilled tomato, some baked beans which were not just straight out of a tin, mushrooms and a couple of beautiful poached eggs. I will never be able to get my own poached eggs to look the same as theirs! The coffee and orange juice were both good.||Apart from breakfast, I ate in the restaurant three times - once for lunch and twice in the evening. I'll do a separate review for...

Terrible, just terrible. Was looking forward to a Mother's Day meal here with the family. They confirmed my reservation about 5 times between emails and calls which I found annoying. Not sure who this restaurant think they are but if someone cancels on them, it's clearly a huge situation for them. We arrived to find out the "heated patio" actually had no heating. So it was freezing and they said they could not accommodate us inside. Would have been nice for them to mention that in one of the 5 booking confirmations or to give us a call ahead of time to give us a head's up on that. We ate, it was indeed freezing. When the bill came, my thought was I could have flown to Spain for that price. Management is very bad. I initially spoke to an Assistant Manager about the situation - he was completely useless. A Manager spoke to us at the end of the meal to try to apologise and did a terrible job of that as well. He gave me the whole history of their gas import problem and how they also don't have enough electric power to heat the patio properly missing the point that that is his job and his problem, not mine. My thought was José Pizarro is clearly a very talented chef but unfortunately he has hired a couple of idiots to run this place. When we walked through the indoor seating area upon leaving, there were 3 empty tables which all could have accommodated us. This is clearly a customer's last restaurant just focused on making as much money as possible as opposed to a customer's first restaurant. I hope they go out of business. I won't even buy a pint there in the future. I'd go somewhere else in Claygate or Esher - anywhere else is better than this place. Our server was nice, and equally freezing. I imagine the other Mother's who had lunch there too now all...