The Drum Inn — Restaurant in England

Honestly the worst experience we've ever had there, and we've been going for the last 40 odd years. I'll start at the beginning, it was our wedding anniversary so let's pop down to our local, and have a free birthday bottle of bubbly to collect via the app. Drop into the app, book a table, then look at the menu, and that's where it all started going south. There's a Weekend treat menu with 2 courses for £27.50 ( remember that figure for later!) OH is pescatarian (FYI a veggie that eats fish) so she looks through the choices, ah calamari greyed out! ok arrincini, nope that's out as well, ok what else maybe soup (but app doesn't give flavour!), or mushrooms, nothing else for her, but looks at mains anyway. Sea bass maybe, puy lentil pie that's another option. Tell you what lets go down and see what exactly is or isn't on and decide to eat or not. Get down there and speak to a nice young chap behind the bar, he asked all the right questions and what he didn't know, he checked with the manager/chef. No problem sir we can do any main from the standard menu as a substitute, perfect. Waited 5 mins to be seated, and waiting staff helpful,and the free bottle of bubbles and loyalty card scanned through the app. 1st niggle, the bottle came out open, been caught out before with a drink swap, so didn't pour for a mo as the waitress then said that yes we can sub a main but there would be a surcharge, errr no that's not what you bar staff said, she gets manager, who at first said the same, I asked for main menu and politely pointed out that the choice was cheaper that out of stock choice, she huffed then "oh I'll have to ask the head chef" went off, came back, "on this occasion sir, we'll allow it at the deal price", also we pointed out that actually a fair amount of choice was out and was it not a good idea to cross out on the menus, that went down like a lead balloon, and she went off on 1 about stock levels and swapping dishes would mess it up further(still can't work that 1 out!) In the end we said ok and ordered off the deal menu and started drinking the bubbles. She also pulled the waitress to 1 side and had a go at her out in the restaurant for giving out the wrong menu. Food came fairly quickly, a reasonable amount and quality. We finished the food and was asked if we wanted dessert, "yes please and can we see both menus in case we want to choose" reply "yes but it won't be at the deal price" that's ok we want to look at both. 2 menus appeared, both the same deal choices, can we look at both, huff, shrug, ok, they came but by this time we'd gone off the idea of a pudding. Can I have the bill please? ( remember that deal price at the beginning!!!!!), bill came in at .........£63.50, hang on a mo, we had 2 of the deals, 2 x £27.50 = £55 straight. Oh no sir that's because you scanned the free bubbly and the loyalty, WHAT??? you scanned them and at no point did you say anything about that (pretty sure the likes of Sainsbury's not only discount your food but also give you rewards when you scan their loyalty cards). Sent the bill back via the manager, after a long wait, magically the bill comes back at £55!!!!!!! with another "on this occasion the manager has said that we'll only charge you the deal price" So to sum up --- RUBBISH CUSTOMER SERVICE FROM THE MANAGER (bar and wait staff were ok) AWFUL CHOICE OF FOOD IF YOU'RE VEGGIE/PESCATATIAN/OTHER DIETARY ON ANY DEAL STAFF HAVE NO IDEA OF WHAT IS OR ISN'T DOABLE AND LASTLY CHECK YOUR BILL WITH A MICROSCOPE

RANT OVER (ps thanks to the 2 loverly ladies who gave us a lift cos it started hammering it down on the walk home, you...

This Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) property in a picturesque part of Torquay is one of the worst restaurants that I have ever visited. It should be an object lesson to hospitality students as to how not to run a restaurant.

First is the telephone reservations line. They have manned it with a dysfunctional IVR app. making the process devoid of any scintilla of hospitality. They don't want you as a customer! Second, they supply the staff with iPads to take orders. There was enormous industry resistance to these when they came out fifteen years ago because of the fear that they would encourage a 'heads-down ordering posture'. That is what happened, in our case, as the first-night waitress struggled with making it work. It wasn't her fault. Her supervisor pushed her onto the floor with inadequate training and no  experienced mentor to stand behind her. Likely, that supervisor was following M&B policy of cutting costs by hiring newbies and throwing them out there with minimal training. How does Phil Urban, the CEO of the M&B clown-car, plan to compensate customers paying full price for this?

The cost-cutting translates to the ingredients. Chicken pate came out of some plastic tube rather than being scratch-made. Cornichons came out of a jar. Hedgerow chutney (Christ knows who thought up that name) likewise.

Fish and chips were dull and average. The ketchup bottle I got was almost empty. The promise to bring a full one, if needed, was never kept. By the time the fries were cold I looked around for the waitress to get the bill. She had disappeared, and so too had apparently all the rest of the adolescent front-of-house staff. There was no senior leadership. The floor was empty for minutes on end!

Wine lovers avoid. I had ordered a Gavi wine.It was anemic and devoid of varietal character. I wonder if I was served the wrong wine? Incidentally,there is nobody on staff who knows a thing about wine or has a title like 'sommelier'.  Only a handful of wines, and, in South Devon of all places, no English sparkling wine! M&B appears to be a latter-day Beefeater. Nice premises, cheap ingredients, no wine expertise, simple recipes doable by a little-trained cooks. Undertrained staff recruited from local colleges. Accountants in charge of the show in London. With so much restaurant choice nowadays we would be fools to be the patsies in this fraud....

Very disappointing experience today at The Drum Inn. The pub itself is lovely but so much was wrong with our food order. The soup starter was the tiniest portion of soup I've ever seen for £6, so it was sent back. The portions in general were small with just a handful of chips with mains. I came home and ate dinner after, never a good sign! We also asked for the vegan version of the soup, which is an option on the menu and were served real butter with it - this is not OK! Onion rings were missing from two of the burger meals. Crackling on the roast dinner was so embarrassing that it was even mentioned on the menu, it was the size of a matchstick. The food wasn't hot. Mains arrived before our starters were cleared away. We were passed our plates to handle ourselves, (including to the children in the group) rather than having them placed in front of us. Drinks were dumped in front of anyone. We were told the fries that were served may not be vegan as they weren't sure how the were made in the factory, yet they were part of the vegan burger meal. There was no vegan dessert option on the menu, we were kindly catered for when we asked for a dessert and it was actually lovely (the best part of the whole meal). But just as some feedback from someone who is vegan, please don't exclude us from your menu, it doesn't feel great, especially if you actually have a lovely option and please train your staff on the difference between vegan and vegetarian as most of them seemed to think it meant the same thing, which put us on edge when trying our food, not a nice feeling. Would I come back here for food, no I definitely wouldn't. As one of the vegans in the group I felt nervous about what I was eating - weather I was about to eat something with dairy in it or not and at £230 for an 8 person meal I would expect so much better. Please, please don't bother putting vegan options on your menu A if you can't offer something for each course and B if you can't train your staff on exactly what vegan means. Wish we'd read all the negative reviews before booking a table here to celebrate three family birthdays, but we had a drink here a few weeks before and the pub looked lovely. Shame the food was so...