Cross Keys — Restaurant in England

Lovely pub for a drink, friendly older staff behind bar. However, food, not so much. The seating area in the “dinning room” was tiny and silent. My raspberry gin and lemonade was cloudy and had floaters in. After a sip, we asked the bar staff if this was right and they did offer to change it but said it was dirty from the dishwasher.

We ordered food. My cottage pie had no flavour, it just simply needed salt and pepper. The “seasonal vegetables” were 3 small slices of carrots and two broccoli. Two ordered steak but was very chewy and just not a good cut. The steak also hadn’t been seasoned so was tasteless.

Staff then came over and took a plate when 5 people were still eating. We felt pressured that they just wanted us to go. Came to take another that still had food on. They then took 5 plates but left 1 for 15 minutes empty. Staff never asked how things were or asked for drinks order.

The paper table cover looked so tacky and when wet from drinks, it ripped and looked even worse (picture added).

Whilst sat at our table in the dinning room, with another couple, 15-20 men came into the tiny room queuing to get curry that was sat on the table (buffet style). They were blocking the only entrance to the room. This made us all feel extremely uncomfortable.

We then for the bill at the bar after and had to stand at the bar and wait for him to type a hand written piece of paper into the machine. The bill was not itemised (“food”, “food”,...

First of all, if you want to eat here you MUST have an advance reservation. In June of 2023 my daughter and I walked in at 7:30PM on a Thursday evening and asked for a table for two. The young girl behind the bar asked if we had a reservation, to which we said, "no." The whole pub went quiet while everyone listened in on our conversation. She said that we could come back at 8PM if we wanted to. There was an empty table close to the bar, and we asked if we could have that one. She said, "no, that table is for the bar." So we left. IF she had said, you are welcome to sit and have a drink while you wait, it would have been nice.

Undaunted, we called and made a reservation for four for Sunday lunch. We arrived and were seated and had a very nice, gluten free lunch. The food was good. Our table reservation was a 12 noon. As we sat and chatted after lunch, we were asked to vacate the table as another sitting would begin at 1:30PM. So we moved to the bar. On my way to the bathroom, I peeked into the dining room, and guess what, our table was empty. Nice place, nice food, mostly staffed by young girls who need...

Booked this place ages ago for a Sunday Dinner as we were staying in the area. We spoke to a young girl about having vegan options on the sunday dinner and she said this was no problem and wrote this down. However when it came to the day of the meal they claimed, the only Vegan sunday dinner option was vegetables with gravy. Not even a yorkshire pudding. As well as a Chilli or a Curry. Yet we talked about a ‘sunday dinner’ and this was a seriously poor attempt of a vegan meal.

In this day and age, surely you should ensure there is plenty of vegan options especially if this was something that could be done at the time of booking the meal and they had time to prepare for this. The way this was dealt with was awful as the young girl claimed to go and ask the chef about options we could have. Put her coat on, looked at us and left the pub. No answers from her!!

Seemed like a really lovely pub but let themselves down regarding vegan options. Absolutely ridiculous. Found another pub less than 2 miles from this one who had plenty of vegan options and let us book last minute. The type of service...