Hope & Anchor — Restaurant in England

We called in at 5pm on a Sunday for a family tea whilst staying at the local haven site. There were 6 adults and 2 children. The pub looks lovely from the outside and on arrival we were seated quickly but told they were only serving Sunday lunch. We decided this was fine and we had all ordered by around 5.30pm. It took until gone 6pm for our food to arrive. The children's meal came with gravy on which we had asked for without any. Anyone with children will know they absolutely wont eat something if it's got something on that they dont like. The waiter said would it be ok as if not the chef would have to make another meal from scratch. We had to say no it wasn't ok knowing the child wouldn't eat it so they took it away and went to start cooking a new meal. The next meal came out, again, it had gravy on when requested without. We were told the writing was too small on the ticket and so chef didnt see it. We kept that meal and decided to just make do. Eventually all the other meals made it to the table except the child meal which we were now waiting for. It was around 6.15 when food arrived so 45 mins after ordering. No one else was in the pub ordering food so no idea what the delay was. A family behind us had finished as we arrived and it looked as though they had left most of their dinners also. Anyway, everyone started to tuck in to the food that we did have. The meat was lovely however some of the food wasn't hot. And also the roast potatoes were clearly frozen and seemed to have been microwaved as they weren't crispy or hot and were tough to cut into. At this point we just weren't happy with the food, the service or the long wait. So we paid for our drinks and sent all the food back. We had wasted an hour at this point and were all starving including one child who had, had nothing to eat at all. Very disappointing for a local village pub which should have been in an ideal place to make money from tourists staying close by. Not what we expected from a robinsons pub. There didnt seem to be anyone obviously in charge and no one came over to ask us what the problem was. The barman apologised and that was that, we walked out. Reviews say how nice the beer garden is and the drinks and I cant argue with that but for food...

Just been to the Hope and Anchor for a meal. Upon arriving we were advised that there would be an hour wait which wasn’t a problem at all as there is a lovely beer garden that you can wait in.

Upon being seated we promptly ordered our food and this is where the problems started to occur.

The food took over an hour to come out which was not expected at all leaving myself, my husband and children ravenous. My husband asked the waitress how long our food would be and she said it was just coming out. The landlord saw my husband enquire (at the kitchen) and asked the waitress what the problem was but still didn’t come and address the problem. Ten minutes later our children’s food came out however our food was nowhere to be seen. Another ten minutes later our food also came out.

I ordered the pie of the day (steak and ale) which was delicious. It came with mash, carrots and broccoli and was a very generous portion.

The children had cheese and tomato pasta which was fairly basic but they seemed happy.

My husband ordered fish and chips which were an utter disappointment. The batter was soggy and the chips were undercooked. He was so hungry that he ate the fish but left most of the chips.

Not once in our meal did the waitress ask how our food was otherwise she would have been advised of this.

Upon my husband going to pay, the waitress came over and asked me if everything was ok. I advised her of the problems with my husbands food and that it was too late to rectify because we had already paid. By this point I just wanted to get the children home to bed (since it was now 8.45).

This put us off ordering dessert as we couldn’t have waited any longer - although the dessert menu...

If I could leave 0 stars for the food I would. I’ve never left a review for somewhere before but I am so horrified by the shockingly poor standard of food, that I couldn’t not. My husband and 3 children had a table booked for 4.30, the waitress was really lovely and friendly so couldn’t fault the service. The food however, was absolutely disgusting with mine actually being inedible. It is the first time in my life i physically couldn’t eat the meal because it was so bad! The mashed ‘potato’ was cheap microwaved stuff that was full of hard potato lumps with no flavour whatsoever. The sausage tasted cheap and was obviously very poor quality, it left a funny aftertaste. The gravy was obviously an instant one which was cold and lumpy. My son’s kids menu burger looked vile, I would’ve even feed to a dog. The burger was definitely not fresh or homemade it was the kind of instant burger that’s put in a microwave. Although my meal was taken off the bill because it was inedible, we still had the pleasure of paying £64 to eat here. While we were seated I watched a Scottish waitress serve a glass of wine in a cocktail glass and say ‘sorry we’ve no wine glasses left’. The woman and man understandably looked horrified. I also heard the other waitress explain to a family looking to book a table, that they were fully booked due to the kitchen being understaffed. I would have rather they had cancelled the booking than serve such cheap...