Dog & Gun — Restaurant in England

I'm a little shocked in all honesty as to how this beautiful place churned out such a poor experiance. First of all the setting inside and out is brilliant, it's incredibly warm and inviting. The reality however is that it's not warm, it's scorching. The place was hot, unbearably so. Our party of 14 all complained about the heat which inevitably out us off our food but it was an especially busy evening and so possibly out of their control. What was in their control however is the service, which was appalling. I find it incredibly hard to believe that a place that sells out all their tables, with reservations weeks in advance cannot set the tables beforehand. To make matters worse, staff basically dumped a tonne of cutlery at one side of table without so much as a smile. Most of which was incorrect for dishes we ordered, and wasn't enough for us all prompting us to ask for more when staff infrequently walked by. We could not order drinks at the table as directed by staff and had to walk to the incredibly small bar for a place this size which had a large queue, so we weren't able to get many drinks. At £4.10 for a pint of diet coke however, I seriously doubt we would have bought many. The there's the food. It was good, but absolutely not worth the money or the wait. Good pub food starts with getting the basics right, and these guys didn't. The chips were bad. Tasteless, undercooked very thick with very little crisp to them, almost like you'd expect weight watchers fries to be with not much coating on them as to save on calories. Was impressed with a large cut of gammon upon tasting it though, the cut seemed to be mostly tough meat and fat. Others were similarly unimpressed with the food. Sides were anemic, garlic bread being 2 slices of bread lightly glazed with garlic butter about as thin as a pencil and not much thicker, and with no cheese. It was dry, hard as a rock. Deserts while tasting good were small in portion size and exrortionately expensive for what they were (£7.25 for bread and butter pudding) All of the food however would have been acceptable albeit disappointing, if not for the extremely poor service from start to finish. Hard to belive that the bar was so tiny and understaffed absolutely overwhelmed and not able to cope with demand for drinks, it's shocking that staff dump napkins and an assumably random amount of cutlery at one end of a table and then wander off without a word. Nobody at any point came and asked if our food was okay, if we got everything we ordered, and for all 3 courses we either had to go to the bar or flag down staff to inform them we don't have all the dishes yet, or that we wanted a desert menu, or that we needed extra cutlery, we had to chase them down at every avenue. Being that we had a party of 14, many of us wanted to pay seperately, and the staff then acted as though we were the first ever customers to want to do this. They again were totally overwhelmed with this and so we had to work this all out ourselves and direct the staff as to how much each of us were paying as all of the orders are done via paper. Took us about half an hour to work this out.

Overall I'd say it's average pub food with a price mark up for its location and wonderful decor. When fully booked, the place cannot cope with that amount of customers and should consider covering less tables instead of providing a lesser service, considering most reviews are extremely positive, I expect we had a particularly bad experiance due to how busy it was. I'd go here again but with far less people at a quieter time and expect the service to be far, far better, but if you're a big party on a busy night, expect to be chasing around staff for your drinks cutlery, food, and bill all night. In addition. You do not need the heating on full blast when it's a mild night and there's that amount of people in a small place. Ourselves and multiple other tables complained it was far too hot and put us...

I want to start by stating that the Covid 19 measures were really good here. There were pop up shields between tables, social distancing and cleanliness was 5/5.

We pre booked a table during our stay a 30 min walk from here, we had driven past on our way here and thought we might enjoy our first proper meal out in months!

However, when we arrived after being seated our experience was dismal. It took far too long to take our initial drinks order and we were ready to order our meals, however we were interrupted mid order so that the bar could get our drinks first and then the waitress returned to take the rest of our order, not a major inconvenience but we found a bit odd.

We were then served by 4 members of staff who all bar one didnt seem like they wanted to be there, I appreciate that especially at the moment work is harder, but a small smile or a little chat as we were being served takes nothing, everything was 1 word responses or things just being put in front of us with no word.

We generally felt uncomfortable and unwanted the whole time we dined there so much so we skipped out on our plans for a second drink after the meal.

Our starters were lovely, we had garlic bread and beef and mozzarella bites in a tomato and basil sauce and it set the meal up to be lovely despite the service. However we both ordered a D&G bbq burger and we were very disappointed. These burgers tasted and looked exactly like frozen burger van burgers. Don't get me wrong I enjoy a good cheap burger, but I don't normally pay £10.25 for one in a restaurant.

We had to go to the bar to be able to pay for our food as though our food arrived speedily on our table any other service seemed to take an eternity, after dessert we were the only customers in the restaurant yet we waited at least 15 mins before deciding to get up ourselves.

When we went to pay at the bar we were given a price that was double what we had ordered, my partner kindly stated that he didn't think this was the right order and mentioned that the receipt had wine on which we didnt order. To which the staff behind the bar snapped back that this was the order before. We have no qualms with mistakes but there are ways to acknowledge it and a quick 'sorry I'm not sure what happened there' is all that was required.

All in all we really would not recommend going here and spending money where it seems like nobody...

Never again. We arrived for 4pm booking to be told that the people at our table hadn't left yet, and could we wait outside. Ok, no problem. We thought the staff member would have a polite word with them, letting them know that the next booking was here and we would be seated within a few minutes. Seems perfectly reasonable considering that everyone knew the booking system was in place. So after sitting outside in the cold for 40 minutes with no sign of a staff member and no offer of drinks, we were finally seated with an insincere "yeah, sorry about that" from the young staff member. The waiter pounced within seconds asking us what drinks we wanted before we even had chance to look. No prices on the drinks, yet the food had prices, can't see the reasoning behind that at all. Care to explain why? What followed was problem after problem. Bill's can't be split, computer said no. I ate my entire meal without a drink because nobody asked if we wanted an other, drinks were wrong. My pudding was obviously forgotten because we were one spoon short and mine arrived after everyone else had finished. Basically it looks like greed got in the way of good service. They had oversubscribed and packed as many people in as possible. Then either didn't have enough staff, or the staff didn't have the experience to deal with the situation. Not one mention of track and trace either. By the time we left we were fuming and they knew it. No apologies, no complimentary offerings for the long wait and terrible service. We will never visit again which is unfortunate as the food (though small portions for the price)...