Hinderton Arms — Restaurant in England

It's a while since we visited the Hinderton Arms as we'd been disappointed in the past. Well, tonight was a great improvement, we tried the festive menu and were pleasantly surprised. A quite different Christmas selection all cooked to perfection and at a reasonable price point. Great service from all the staff especially Harrison our waiter who looked after us admirably. We'll certainly be visiting again in the near future.

Update Visited again tonight, service as usual was very good and at first the food appeared to be as good as our last visit, that was until I cut into my Steak, Mushroom and Ale Pie. Unfortunately there wasn't mushroom for the steak, or to put it another way there wasn't any Steak in it. Many apologies and the pie discounted off the bill helped but our pleasant evening out was tainted and we left. I'm sorry Hinderton Arms but your standards, like a lady of the night's underwear have definitely fallen!

Further Update Why oh why did I do it? Visied again today for a quick lunch, I chose:

Toad in the Hole Cumberland sausages baked into a Yorkshire pudding topped with caramelised red onion and served with bubble & squeak mash and gravy

It sounded delicious until it arrived, I can only assume that the chef also did shifts at the local crematorium, the whole dish was overcooked, the sorry excuse for a Yorkshire Pudding (being from Yorkshire I count myself as a bit of an expert in the field) was welded to the inside of the totally unnecessary miniature iron frying pan. The sausages, burned on the top and verging on raw in the middle were a poor excuse for Cumberland sausage. The whole dish only lifted slightly above inedible by the caramelised red onions and the mash. Thank goodness the chef didn't get near my pint of Guinness!

Final Update

A few days ago we received an invite to revisit the Hinderton Arms from Harry who has taken over as the manager. Well, our experience was much better than our previous 2 visits, we enjoyed a leisurely meal of very good food well prepared and presented food. Most importantly it was delicious. The service was excellent from all the team and a far cry from our last experience. We spoke to Harry after our meal and he explained changes he had made at the Hinderton all of which certainly seem to be working. Sorry, no photos of the food this visit, we we're too busy enjoying the fayre to get the phone out and mess with the camera... Would we revisit? Yes, most definitely if this is the standard...

I visited the Hinderton Arms on Mother’s Day with my family, and unfortunately, I was served and ate raw chicken. It was charred black on the outside, so I didn’t notice straight away. However, after a few bites of the burger, I get into the middle and it was completely undercooked and visibly pink inside (I thought the same thing you might be thinking – clean grill, right?). And here's the best part...I became unwell afterwards. The entire experience ruined what should have been a nice evening for my mum. Not to mention, the other meals weren’t exactly great either.

I didn’t make a scene in the restaurant, it's not my style, and I don't even like writing this review. I quietly got up, explained what had happened, and left. I followed up privately afterwards, expecting the issue to be taken seriously. Instead, I was told that "all controls which ought to have been employed to guarantee the safety of your food were being employed."

Well, it was raw!... like properly raw in the middle, not slightly, it was nearly clucking so I wouldn't be so sure on that one.

I was then offered a voucher I’d never use and told the matter was closed. I don’t want a voucher, I wanted reassurance. Since then, I’ve been ignored completely. No proper apology, no explanation, and no evidence that they’ve done anything to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

I figured maybe they would compensate me for being ill, if not through an apology using words due to a fear of a legal matter, but perhaps through action, but no. Now, I’m just being ignored and they think that a voucher is enough to silence me. The way they handled this has been just as disappointing as the meal itself.

I gave them every chance to make this right, but clearly, customer health and trust don’t mean much to them. I wouldn’t eat here again that's for sure, and I think others deserve to know what kind of response they might get "if" something goes wrong. The staff referred to me as the "raw chicken guy"... seems even they weren’t shocked, so this could be a...

Absolutely terrible! We had arranged to visit the Hinderton Arms a couple of weeks in advance to our visit. We has paid a deposit, for our party of eight, and explained one person in the group has dementia and we will need everything to run as smoothly as possible not to upset them. We had been in the restaurant twice in the previous week to discuss our needs with the manager. He had given us an email address to send our meal order in advance. I has also rang and confirmed the address to make sure they had our order. We arrived at the Hinderton Arms on time, at 1:30pm, to find no one knew about our pre-order and our table not ready. A scruffy middle aged man just barked at me, from behind the bar 'you don't email pre-orders' and walked off without apologising. We waited another 15 minutes while staff pushed tables together and got our table ready. We just had to stand in reception and, again, no apology, or explanation. Then the terrible service started. On six occasions one of our party had to ask where our food was. We had to ask twice for our plates to be cleared - when we could find staff to ask and, eventually, finished our meal after three and a half hours! There where only two other tables occupied so they couldn't blame being busy for our ridiculous wait. In this time we had to make the member of our party, who has dementia, as comfortable as possible. When we went to pay, again we has to wait, no one apologised for the amount of time we had to spend there, or give a reason for the terrible service. Surly, rude staff. Incredibly poor customer service and mediocre food. In all one of the worst restaurant experiences we have ever had. I would like someone to respond to this complaint, but I'm not going to...