Ego at The Flying Fox — Restaurant in England

This is going to be mildly negative I'm afraid, please refrain from reading on if necessary. I'll understand.

The Flying Fox has recently been Corporately traded by Vintage Inns over to Mitchells & Butlers brands and I'm not entirely convinced that the transition is a happy (or be a successful) one. Under the old banner, we've been coming here for probably twenty years...and I don't understand the real reason for the change. At an inter-corporate level, it usually has something to do with "brand-stratergy/realignment" within the portfolio...at the detriment of customers...who Head-Office almost always fails to understand. It seems as if cash-flow and "brand" are king in the 'large-corporate' food and beverage sector.

It was always a decent British Pub, serving pretty good food - albeit with a somewhat tired decor in its latter years. It needed a refurb.

Today, it's called Ego. A "Mediterranean" (it certainly isn't) restaurant which still serves a Sunday roast. Bit weird!? It's "Mediterranean" but still gives its punters what they've always wanted - what is "easy to serve" and puts quick cash in the till.

The Sunday Roast menu was extremely good value. Gargantuanly, almost off-puttingly huge portions, served on lovely hot plates (I had dirty cutlery) by hugely attentive staff who either had been newly recruited, or thoroughly re-trained (to the new brand guidelines). That's how it felt...you could argue..."Well, what do you expect for £20.95 for two courses?"....and you'd probably be right...but I can't help thinking that the Great British public deserves so much better from its pub-chains.

Food-wise, the new "open-pass" is always lovely to see but the food in general came across as ultra-processed mass-catering - delivered by a truck once a week and then just re-heated. I doubt there's actually very much fresh cooking going on here.

Garlic mushrooms in a creamy sauce and the roast-lamb (case-in-point)...both tasted extremely manufactured...almost Captain Birdsye levels of syntheticness. If you can yourself cook decent food, you'll understand.

Finally, to have a staff ordering terminal on a stair-well is plainly ridiculous and actually quite dangerous. On two occasions today, there were two/three members of staff crowded around this ordering-point (bar-staff trying to also bring drinks to tables, whilst I was trying to walk my elderly mother down these steps.

Management, see picture and change it! There's gonna be...

Sadly we won't be returning. 4 of us had booked a table at 1245 for a Sunday lunch.

2 of us had pate for starter. In my entire life as a chef I have never had runny Patè (obviously left under the warm lights too long) and the bread to patè ratio was abysmal as was the presentation. 2 pots and 3 slices of mediocre bread and a knife. Another of us had a Broccoli and Stilton soup which again was mediocre. No sense of presentation like a sprinkle of olive oil and maybe a few chunks of actual Stilton 🤔 The other had kofters which were apparently good (thankfully)

Onto the main. We all stuck to the roasts, 2 of us had a trio of meat ( more about that in a bit) 1 had roast chicken the other beef.

My "trio" came with a good chunk of chicken, a slice of roast beef (rather grisly) and the smallest piece of what I think was pork (see pic).

The other plates of meat were just acceptable but that's where it ended. All our vegetables were just warm as were the "roast potatoes" (as if they saw any roasting) parsnips were cold inside and undercooked as were ther carrots. The red cabbage was disgusting 🫣 and 99.9% sure it was mixed with Chinese 5 spice. No, do NOT do that. It DID NOT taste good.

We asked for some extra gravy due each plate only being shown a gravy portion that couldn't cover 2 piece of beef and although a small pot was bought we asked for another which never showed.

Wr had also ordered a cauliflower cheese which turned up swimming in whatbwas supposed to be a cheese sauce but was obviously out of a packet. Absolutley disgusting.

A young lad came and asked us if everything was OK and obviously we told him the issues. He did apologise and said he'd tell his manager. He came back and said "I know you've basically finished but would you like some hot veg and potatoes?" We politely declined.

On top of all of that the epitome of sacrilegious behaviour was the Yorkshire puddings were all burnt and again Luke warm (and I'm being polite).

All in all NOT a good experience unfortunately. And no we were not offered any sort of compensation, in fact the manager never even come and spoke with us or the people behind us that were also complaining.

And lastly the gentleman in the waistcoat working at the lecturn, maybe smile and make an effort with the customers and if you say you're not serving roast dinners outside then stick to...

My comments will be honest and hope to be constructive. My wife and I move from London to this loveable area almost 2 years ago and ASAP we started our search for good places to go out with our family.

After several disappointing excursions we end up in the Flying Fox and I have to say that we were very impressed from day one and continue going back as often as we were able to, bringing family and friends who came to visit us.

Being in London for almost 4 decades and linked in our early days with the hospitality/catering industry it gives the knowledge to make a judgement about what is right or wrong wherever we go and believe, we know the constrains and the difficulty to get it right if all is needed is not in place.

We were in the Flying Fox last, over a month ago and as soon as we walked in we sensed that something has changed.

We were escorted to our table (41) and carefully ordered our wine and dinner from the obvious new menu:

1. we ordered a bottle of Chanti which to our surprise came to the table open in a very disappointing, was not shown to us to verify if it was the right order and was poor straight into both glasses to try. It was really nice I have to say. See the picture. Later on we made comments to the lady who was looking after us about the protocole and to serve the wine.

2. Food was average and something is missing there to get to the quality we have been used to receive as when ever customer visit the restaurant. It should not be about being new and be learning because we the customers are paying the full price regardless the quality of what has been delivered onb the day.

By the way Tiramisu was removed and that was a big miss.

I think, a serious training should be implemented ASAP to preserve what is still good and bring the Flying Fox to the level it was for us as your customers before the administration and staff was changed. It is not the staff’s fault, it is the administration who put them on the spot without the right skills.

Sorry to be writing and honestly hope it helps.

We should give it another go in the future to see how things have been improved in your...