The Bird in Hand — Restaurant in England

Our first visit for a year or so. It was supposed to be a Birthday treat, but the memory is not a happy one. Liked the new decor but the chairs are uncomfortable. The place was half empty but service was slow. The wine was lovely and the dessert was scrumptious. BUT we chose to have a ploughmans as it was a hot day and wanted salad and something cold. Worst cheese ploughman ever. £14 each and for that we had- A few scraps of lettuce leaves, one tiny tomato chopped in half, 3 scrappy slivers of apple, 2 small offcuts of cucumber, HALF a pickled onion(!), 2 small pieces of cheese, a small dish of relish and 2 pieces of bread (this took up most of the plate - I thought maybe there was some more food underneath, but no!).

I regret not taking a photo but I was trying to make the most of the day. As time goes on I feel like we were robbed. £55 for 2 lunches where the main course was so sparse. Nobody bothered to ask if everything was OK, or i would have told them. We won't be back. There are plenty of better places to go. p.s. a week later and nobody cares that they have an indifferent review! I am still...

Went there this evening for 6.00pm. The entire pub has been refurbished and so has the pub garden. It looks lovely.

Went to the bar and registered our vehicle on the machine. Five waitresses were in the bar area. Not one person said hello to us or acknowledged us until we engaged with them.

Shown to our table in the conservatory. Nobody brought menus and we had to get up and ask for drinks to be taken (we'd been sat for 15 minutes).

We ordered the nachos which were lovely. £4 for a pint of diet coke each - drinks arrived quickly after we had finally be able to order some.

We got the nachos to start - a HUGE portion for £9.95 and definitely worth the money! (In hindsight, we should not have ordered mains).

Mains arrived very quickly so didn't have enought time to digest our starters.

Nobody did a check back to see how our food was.

Honestly, we probably would just go back for the nachos but as for a the overall dining experience it was a definite 4/10 due to lack of service.

You can't do a full referb into a gastro-pub/ fine dining and then not execute appropriate staff...

We went for a Bday sunday lunch, food was ok but I am very sad about what happened after. We got a a parking ticket (we have been customers for the last 5 years and never registered before, also nobody told us that we needed to do it and unless you go straight in front of the till you wouldn't know). As the Pub owns the car park I sent them an email to ask if they could kindly send me back the evidence that we were there on that day so I could appeal. They never reply so I called them and they boringly told me that a screenshot of the payment would have been enough. Well, it was not. Once I learnt this we went back to the pub to explain the situation and hopefully get some help but the young lady was too busy to put her lipstick on while saying they couldn't do anything and that we need to deal directly with the company. I am very disappointed. They could at least have shown some care but they didn't at the beginning nor when we told them that they were loosing customers. Very unprofessional, I am sorry because I used to like the place and angry because it could have been...