Ship & Trades — Restaurant in England

Had a Sunday lunch here last Sunday. Mixed bag, I'll start with the good

My food I thought was very decent. The portion size I'd describe as "just about enough" and was fine for me, the quality of the strip loin roast beef was surprisingly good, tender and plenty of flavour, there was not a lot of gravy, gravy is a personal choice and I'd have liked to decide how much is enough rather than the kitchen. The crumble and custard for afters was also very nice, if I'm being slightly picky and I find this with a lot of places and their desserts in that it was overly sweet. Let the apples and blackberries or whatever fruit do their thing is my advice and for the crumble it doesn't need to taste of brown sugar, a tiny bit of that stuff goes a long way, the custard was delicious. All of this criticism is constructive and I'll say again, the food was good.

The less good points

Some of the meals were served cold, like stone-cold. Being British nobody said anything, just ate it and paid. Being totally objective my food was served at a reasonable temperature but I would say something, if asked how my meal was. The rest, well I can't make them

We were there at a peak time, half one on a Sunday is going to be busy, I get it. That shouldn't be a surprise to the venue however, the people serving were perfectly nice and polite however the service was sporadic and the opposite of attentive. The waiting staff had to be chased up for everything, drinks orders, to take the empty glasses from table, for the right and fresh cutlery for dessert. I can see a manager reading this and rolling their eyes "we were busy" "we were short-staffed" I will hear. Yep, its Sunday lunchtime at a place that regularly is rammed for food, over-resource it, dont roll the dice. It isn't cheap to eat here and I don't think its unrealistic or diva-behaviour to expect a table to be waited especially when the service charge is added regardless giving the customer the incredibly awkward situation of having to explain why they want the service charge taken off (that's not what we did, just got the hump about the poor service and how much of a surcharge was added for it). Before the management reply and say "you should have mentioned it". Me getting up a handful of times to ask for a drinks order, to ask for cutlery for the desserts, to ask for the table to be cleared and then ask for the bill tells its own tale. The question wasn't asked when we were paying the bill either and that was done in a rush.

I've been using the pub since the very first day it opened and have always liked the place for drinking, this is the first time I've eaten there and I'm prepared to give it a second chance but its then the Sunday food dilemma, get there too early its packed and service drops, get there too late and half the menu is unavailable. There are a lot of good places to eat in Medway and Maidstone now and I'm of the mind to try them before coming back for round 2.

Maybe a smaller group would find the service better, we were a group of 11 and I do get that tables that size can be a bigger task to get the timing right for the food to all be hot but we booked and selected food in advance so... I dont know, lots of people I know like the food here and so did I, the food gets a 5 sadly the service let...

UPDATED REVIEW (28/10/22): I visited for the 2nd time with a few family members so there were 4 of us including my partner who has both gluten & dairy intolerances so her order was a very tricky one but the waitress was superb at working it what she could and couldn't have and made a custom "vegan burger with meat" to suit. It's not uncommon for mistakes to be made with her orders and this was no exception, however the waitress had obviously checked before bringing the food out and came and informed us that Unfortunately her meat had been prepared on a surface that had potentially been contaminated with gluten so they are just redoing her burger but this meant a mere couple of minutes delay on bringing out her burger. There was also a little mixup with my burger as I requested no sauce or salad in mine and it came out with onions and gherkins, however I just scraped them out so wasn't a major issue.... otherwise everything that was ordered was spot on.

On to the food itself, I once again ordered the fillet steak but whenever I see "6oz" or "8oz" on the menu I never feel this is enough, and with most restaurants this is probably correct as a good quarter of the steak is fatty / gristle... this is not the case here or at least not with the fillet... I don't think there was a single piece I didn't eat and even my brother who had the same said it was the best steak he's had in a long time. But of course because I was thinking a 6oz fillet steak would not be enough I also ordered the cheese and bacon burger, though luckily with me being me this was not an issue and I still demolished both and I've got to say bother steak and the burger was amazing. The only comment I will say about the burger is the meat was a little dry, but you could tell that this was because it was just pure meat with next to no fat so I'm not complaining about that at all.

All in all everyone had lovely meals and the servers were perfect, parking is right outside and one of the nice things is the tables aren't all squashed up, I felt there was a very reasonable amount of space between ours and the others surrounding us (more than what you'd get in most reataurants).

ORIGINAL REVIEW: One of the best steaks I've had in a very long time... in fact I'd go as far as saying the 2nd best steak I've ever had... and at a very reasonable price for the quantity / quality.

The restaurant itself is also really nice, tables well spaced out and staff very friendly. They did keep having an issue with the lights for some...

Disappointing!

We had a choice of booking a night here or the already experienced sterile Holiday Inn. But they only had a twin left, so after some discussion we opted for here as it looked like it had a decent restaurant and made a bed sacrifice.

On arrival however, we were told that the restaurant was closed for a private function. This had not been mentioned on the website or booking.

So we were left hovering around in the busy bar section for a table to become free and then have pub grub. No steak knife for my steak, which was okay but nothing special. The bubble and squeak was dry with no cabbage.

Asked for a menu to look at deserts during plate clear up by waitress as we left ours at the bar, but no menu ever arrived. Gave up and went to the co-op next door.

Also a rum and ginger beer at the bar came as a measure of rum in a glass with bottle of crabbies, to then find they didn't have any ginger beer. /sigh

The rooms are kinda fun and quirky; I liked the decor. However there are some big fails here too. For example the good looking bath/shower has the shower head at a fixed six foot height, so if you are six feet tall it will be touching your head: if taller then you will not fit under it! The alarm clock was off/not working and the tiny TV had an annoying bright blue led at night.

Noise carried in the hallways and doors are clunky sounding so although the function people were trying to be quiet when they retired to bed, they still managed to keep us awake until the last went into their rooms.

The breakfast was excellent, both the blueberry pancakes and full english but this was not enough to rescue the rating.

On another day maybe this could have reached a 4 star review, but not this trip...