The Butlers Arms — Restaurant in England

Visited on a Tuesday afternoon. We parked up at the side of the building. Despite the poor weather on the day you can imagine this pub getting very busy in the summer months. A large outdoor seating and dining area and a bowling green at the rear.

It looks bigger inside than it appears from outside with a good range of seating options. Once we were seated a number of menus were presented to us. Quite an impressive range of options to choose from. This including a pizza menu and Specials of the Day. For starters we ordered a Garlic and Cheese Ciabatta. This was only £5.00. We got 4 fairly large pieces. Piping hot and very tasty. It was more than ample to have as a starter to share between two.

I chose from the 12 for 12 option on the midweek menu. A choice of 12 dishes all priced at £12.00 available Monday to Thursday. I went with the Sausage and Mash with garden peas. I also ordered some Onion rings as a side order. Most sides seemed to be priced at £3.50 which is reasonable as many places now charging upwards of £5.00 or more for anything extra on the side. My fellow diner ordered the Steak and Ale pie from the Classics on the main menu priced at £15.00.

Have to say we were impressed with our mains. Mine was a decent sized portion with 3 Cumberland sausages. Not the biggest sausages I have to admit but tasty and succulent. The Steak Pie looked delicious. A large portion full of chunks of steak. An excellent quantity of thick cut chips. Nice to see chips served on the plate and not in a cone or a small container to disguise the measly portions some places offer. Everything was piping hot. We did notice some of the meals going to other tables and the portions on all the plates looked impressive.

Unfortunately I was disappointed with my onion rings. A good portion and some decent sized rings but I think they had been fried in oil that was too hot or they had been refried. They looked a little burned and the batter just broke up as you bit into them. In hindsight I should really have said something at the time rather than at the end of the meal. Had they been more expensive I probably would have done.

Even though I was getting full I wanted to try a dessert. A choice of 8 desserts on the menu and all reasonably priced at £5.95. The crumble of the day was Apple and Blackcurrant with a choice of custard or ice cream. Wasn’t over keen on the crumble topping but the filling was a different matter. Again a very decent portion. Loads of fruit and very enjoyable.

Service was friendly and efficient. Any questions we had about items on the menu were answered to our satisfaction.

Based on our visit would have no hesitation recommending this establishment for a lunch time meal. Impressive range of options. Bigger than average portions and at prices that are very reasonable. I have to say we found the food we had cheaper than many similar places we have visited recently without sacrificing the quality...

The last time I visited this pub for food, the quality of food was excellent. However, do NOT attempt to visit the pub on a Quiz Night. Last night, as our usual pub quiz night does not run on Bank Holidays, we decided, following an adv. that appeared on my FB page welcoming people to their Quiz and jackpot on offer, we decided to attend the Quiz. Three of us went. Never will any of us enter into the Butlers Arms again. First of all, they refused to sell us a raffle ticket on the grounds that if we won the other quiz people would not like it. OK. But this seemed bizzarre when they had been advertising for people. So at the end of the Quiz we asked about it and showed the adv. on my phone. I would never have believed the verbal abuse that we all were subject to. three innocent people going to a pub for a quiz and to join in. Had it appeared on TV we would have considered it far fetched and not real life. But it did happen. The whole pub was up in arms that we had actually questioned this. Surely the polite way to greet strangers is to welcome them and just hope that they do not win your main prize, after all the odds against winning must have been many hundreds to one. In actual fact we would not have won even had we drawn the winning ticket as we did not know the answer to the question. But that is besides the point. The pub erruppted and shouted, and I mean shouted - "Get Out and Don't Come Back". Astonishingly rude. Compared to our usual pub, the Top Lock at Wheelton, it could not have been more different. The Quiz itself at the Top Lock is more interesting, has more content and involves several other sections including Snakes & Ladders, Play Your Cars Right and incidently REAL chips for every table at interval. The Landlord Phil, who runs the quiz welcomes everyone alike. If a complete stranger from a passing barge comes and wins a jackpot. So be it. It happens, The poor man or group is not hounded out of the pub. Never ever again will I set foot in the Butlers Arms. I don not know who owns this pub. The two barmen stood there helplessly whilst this ruction was taking place. No management was in evidence anywhere. What a way to run a...

All in all it’s decent, the food is very tasty, and the drinks were really good! However, service let them down last night. It’s not cheap, so you’d expect a little bit better for the price, and I think it’s the newness and the inexperience showing through, so hopefully it will improve over the next few months.

There’s a general lack of communication I found, multiple check backs from different staff during the same course, and each one asked “is everything alright?” Or “is everything okay?” Most wouldn’t pick up on it, but you shouldn’t ask a closed question when doing a check back because all you get in response is “yes”.

There’s a young lad who probably is trying to take on a managerial role but isn’t at that level yet in my opinion, the booking wasn’t in their diary and rather than getting the manager and sorting it, he said it will be fine and he’ll sort it, well for a big group such as ours that put an obvious strain on the team whilst they scrambled to rectify the issue. Once they found our preorder, we were seated and everything was pretty fine from there, starters a bit slow, but nothing major, and everyone cleaned their plates. Mains better, quick, hot and very tasty! Steak was delicious! But we had another issue with the bills, granted my uncle who booked it organised it for separate bills which is annoying and confusing for a restaurant team, but my dad was charged for two fillets, which we didn’t have and subsequently overcharged by £60. But we got that sorted in the end, and the lad taking payments thought we were doing a runner? When half the group are at the bar paying and the other half are getting my elderly grandmother into the car, he decided to chase my cousin at the door? Which was just a bit unnecessary, considering the group at the bar waiting for him. In his defence the manager rung us after to express his apologies for the misunderstanding.

All in all, I would return, we had a good time celebrating my grans birthday, and she enjoyed it, which is the main thing for all of us. Thanks...