Horse & Groom — Restaurant in England

FOOD POISONING SYMPTOMS NOT INVESTIGATED BY VERBALLY ABUSIVE MANAGER

My partner and I came here with our two friends on Monday 2nd August at around 5pm, and ordered 3 portions of fish and chips, and a burger. Towards midnight, both my partner and I started feeling very unwell, and we contacted our friends to see if they were poorly too - turns out one of them was also. After being awake all night with horrible food poisoning symptoms, and having to cancel our plans for the following day due to feeling unwell, I decided to call the pub. From speaking to our friends, we worked out that, even though she’d ordered a different meal to us, we had all eaten the side of peas.

When I was contacted by Steve, the manager, I was immediately dismissed. He tried to claim that there might be other factors that had caused us to be ill including: having all contracted a stomach bug, or camping/drinking dodgy water from a holiday park? Neither of these applied, as we were staying separately with family, none of whom were ill. He was also adamant that food poisoning takes at least 12 hours to appear, and therefore as we were only poorly after 6 hours then we couldn’t possibly have had it. This is completely false, as stated by the NHS website, “sometimes they (symptoms) start after a few hours or not for a few weeks”. He also dismissed the whole idea that the peas might have been the common factor, as he said you couldn’t get food poisoning from peas. Again, this is incorrect as the NHS website states “any type of food can cause food poisoning”. I told him that I would never accuse an establishment of such a thing unless I was completely sure that it was the case.

He then said that they hadn’t had any other complaints of food poisoning, and so therefore he “wasn’t going to say it was food poisoning.” I pointed out that, as HE had previously said that if symptoms don’t appear until at least 12 hours after eating contaminated food, then perhaps they hadn’t called him yet.

He tried to defend the kitchen cleanliness, to which I said that was unverifiable as they do not have a Food Hygiene Rating.

He said he would call again the following morning (4th) with an update on whether anyone else from the 2nd had contacted them with food poisoning complaints. I was not satisfied with this response as I did not trust him to be truthful, and why should our experiences have to wait to be validated by whether or not others also had a similarly awful experience?

When we did speak on the phone the following day, I asked him what he had done to investigate the situation. He said he “didn’t need to do anything”. This to me was extremely concerning, as it is a blatant failure to protect future customers.

During our phone call, Steve repeatedly swore at and insulted me. I will not dignify this abuse by quoting him here, I can only feel sorry for the staff who have to endure him as a “manager”.

I will be reporting this instance to the Food Standards Agency, and the local Environmental Health Department. This is a breach of the Consumer Rights Act, as our food was clearly not prepared with reasonable skill and care under said Act, 1st October 2015.

I normally would never shame an establishment using Tripadvisor, but the treatment from the manager has left me with no other choice. This is a warning to any other customers. I can only hope this does not happen to...

I'd come here before, about a year and a half ago, and I remember thinking it was the best fish and chips I'd had throughout my whole stay in the Isle of Wight. On this visit I figured my memory must have been wrong, it must've just been exaggerated over time, I went to a bunch of different, "fancier" restaurants to find the best. The last place I went to was here, and yep - it was the best by FAR.

Much more modest price, not budget or anything but cheaper than everywhere else I went. They have a great menu and lots of specials (which were really tempting), including a great range of vegetarian options.

The fish was the biggest portion I'd had that week, and it was crisp, moist and flavourful. I don't know what they put in the chips but as someone who genuinely doesn't like chips, I couldn't stop eating them. They were probably the most delicious part of the whole meal to be honest. They gave me LOADS of peas which is an absolute win in my book because I really love peas. The tartare sauce was absolutely gorgeous, really thick and creamy and not too sour or anything which is exactly how I like it. Everything went together perfectly and it was just a really solid meal.

The dessert came quickly and was also really good. I got the cheesecake last time too and while it's not to die for or anything it's a solid cheesecake and absolutely worth buying.

Plus, I'm not sure how many people care about this, but they have an INCREDIBLE selection of RSPB charity pins. I'm a casual collector and there's no specific place to buy them, you just have to look around local shops and hope you come across a box. Most places have repeats of the same 4 or 5 pins if you're lucky, but I bought 10 here and they had at least 10 other types, none of which I'd seen before. This is my favourite spot to buy them and all of them were different from the last time I visited. I truly have no idea why the gold mine is here but it absolutely is and I thank them for it. I have lots of lovely souvenirs to remember my...

We went here a couple of weeks ago, there was quite a crowd of us. The staff was very friendly, however my husband and I had the Lamb steaks, which came with vegetables and boiled potatoes, I wanted to swap the boiled potatoes for chips, but was told that could not happen unleash I also lost the vegetables as well, in order to get the chips, so I stayed with the boiled potatoes.I have never experienced this anywhere else, you can normally always choose what potatoes you would like, without a problem or a fuss. The food came and it was nice, but it was dry, we had to ask for gravy and was told this doesn't come with gravy, we insisted on having gravy and eventually was given some. there was 20 of us in our party and all the dishes look very nice, the pub took a lot of money from our party. Just a shame that it was so difficult for them to swap boiled potatoes for chips. Horse and Groom...