The Cow — Restaurant in England

Absolutely superb! I'm gutted I can only leave 5 stars!

We've been holidaying on a bit of a budget, but we decided to treat ourselves to one dinner out this week. We chose The Cow because we'd never been, despite coming to IoW most years, and because the adverts boast they are the best burgers on the island.

Keen to put this to the test and I'm happy to say it surpassed expectations. The burgers really were amazing, slightly pink in the middle, juicy and flavoursome. I also upgraded my fries to dirty fries and I recommend you do the same!

I'd like to give a shout out to the kitchen crew as well - we were sat on table 11 next to the serving hatch and they seemed a brilliant team, working fast and efficiently and finding time to throw some banter around, making me miss my years in a kitchen! The chef on the pass even shouted Cheers/have a good night as we left.

Also while I think of it, a note to management: The Kitchen crew have better taste in music than the in-house playlist! Haha! I'd much rather have listened to their 90s/00s pop-punk playlist than the elevator friendly 80s list you had on the speakers! But they didn't have it too loud, I can just pick out The Offspring really easily - please don't take away their radio!

The only downside to our whole visit was that there was a noisy dog inside the restaurant for the first part of the meal, barking really loudly and making my son (who's terrified of dogs - but we're working on it) jump with every bark.

We all talked about our meal the whole drive back to our caravan - a sure fire sign that we'll be back in 2022!...

This was our second visit here to eat at ‘The Cow’ restaurant & Bar, as before, we had pre-booked just to be safe, we needn’t have as there was plenty of room.

We were greeted at the door & shown to our table, seating is at wooden tables and chairs with some wooden benches too, they’re comfortable with cushions/throws on them.

We ordered drinks, a G&T, a Bloody Mary & a Caramel Milkshake, the milkshake was especially good, delicious in fact, the Mermaid G&T was good too, the Bloody Mary was good, albeit VERY spicy (be warned).

We ordered a number of dishes, (see pictures), Short Ribs were especially good, as was the salad, the burger was OK, but if I’m honest, a little dry, the Mac n Cheese was devoured, it was delicious, the fish (Pollock) Goujon’s were not my cup of tea, the taste was fine, but I don’t want to see skin on fish, the Halloumi Fries/sticks were OK, but hard too, over crispy, the onion ring tower came with maybe 10 or so onion rings, but they were over done & the batter was hard/too crunchy as well.

£100 was the bill for the 3 of us, value for money, I’m not too sure, they used to call their burgers ‘the best on the island’ 🤔

The staff were all lovely, especially our server who was funny, amiable & very patient waiting for us to order our drinks/food.

Scone things were very good indeed, sadly others were not.

Will I go back?...

What a shame, this was an excellent restaurant prior to Covid 19 but it is certainly not worth a visit now. When I went in August (sorry for the late review), at this time they had not thought through how to deliver good service along with a good quality a menu. As a result ordering was taken by app which made it like some sort of fast food chain, the app was not the best of layouts either. The menu that was offered was bland and very one dimensional and the quality of food was mediocre (how anyone can say any better only shows the kind of establishments they have eaten in previously). The attitude of staff had also changed from a once helpful and welcoming manner to defensive and with a very much standoff approach and not interested in constructive criticism. I have eaten at many restaurants working under Covid restrictions and practically all of them had procedures better thought through than the Cow. They need to take a good look at how there competitors are delivery a far better service and better quality food before they lose other loyal customers like my family and friends. In summary if I had not known a far better dining experience at this location in the past I would call this nothing more than "over...