The Hand and Flowers — Restaurant in England

Our first visit to The Hand and Flowers in 2013 when they had only one Michelin star was amazing, 5/5. This second visit, 8 years later when they’re now a two Michelin star establishment, was ‘meh’, which is why I fail to rate any higher than 3 out of 5 (husband would give it closer to 4 out of 5, though - I'd be happy to settle at 3.5 but that's not an option).

Prices have roughly doubled in that time but the food experience is not as good. For 2 starters, 2 mains, 1 dessert and a jug of sparkling water we paid £257.

The chips looked beautiful, crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside but the flavour was not there AT ALL. With chips, it’s always comes down to the quality of the potatoes so I would look into that; it’s better to have non-consistent looking chips that taste great than beautiful chips that I frankly wouldn’t even eat with ketchup, I just left them uneaten. Chips was one of the things I loved most in 2013 so I know they can do better.

The lamb bun (their signature dish) is very tasty but WITHOUT the sauce it comes with. I found the sauce very bitter and wished I hadn’t poured it on before tasting it. Lesson learnt, fortunately I’d only poured it on half of the lamb so I was able to enjoy the other half. The crème brulee (sans topping) was the best part of the meal for me, super divine but the topping, which ought to be thin and brittle, was thick and hard, I had to hold my spoon like a hammer to overcome the resistance!

Finally, the terrine was average. The best terrine I’ve ever had was at Canteen in Canary Wharf over 7 years ago and this was no match, yet it cost at least 3 times as much.

The entrée sausage roll was tasty. Bread and butter was sublime, I would buy that butter at the supermarket. The £87 Sirloin beef was melt-in-your-mouth tender (albeit overpriced).

They did try to push their overpriced alcohol but I was honest and said “it’s too expensive” so they didn’t ask again, thank goodness.

The ambience remains positive, the staff are pleasant but given this was such poor value for money, I wouldn’t recommend it – the place is now riding high on the celebrity power of Tom Kerridge and not the quality of its food.

WHAT MY HUSBAND THOUGHT:

This restaurant feels like hallowed ground. I fully expected Tom Kerridge to come from the kitchen and do a walkabout. It did feel like a privilege to be there given the long waiting time for a reservation. However I still had to inhale deeply when I saw the prices next to the drinks and food on the menu.

The choice of food on the menu was varied and there were several dishes that I had to wrestle between. For the starter I chose a salmon pancake which was nothing like I imagined when it was brought out. There were several varieties of caviar and although the dish looked small the salmon (which looked almost raw) was very filling when combined with the rest of the dish.

I really wanted to sample the beef, so ordered that and it was cooked rare to medium as standard which was fine by me. Again the size of the portion was really generous and after the starter and main course I was stuffed and didn’t need to eat again until late evening. The flavour in the meat was very strong and when combined with the fat the effect was mouth-watering. The dishes were well presented and the atmosphere was cozy.

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A Masterclass in Mediocrity: A Cautionary Tale from The Hand of Flowers

We recently visited The Hand of Flowers in Marlow to celebrate my partner’s 60th birthday — a milestone occasion that we had hoped to mark with something truly special. What we received instead was an experience so deeply underwhelming, so bereft of imagination, and so riddled with pretension that it left us questioning whether the Tom Kerridge brand has simply become a machine for monetising celebrity rather than delivering quality.

Let’s start with the menu. (Which we had to read from a tablet as the can’t afford to write out on proper menu cards) We chose a three-course set menu. However, with just two choices per course is not fine dining — it’s a lazy offering dressed up in self-importance. The fact that both the stater & the mains involved mini pastry pies speaks volumes about the lack of creativity coming out of the kitchen. A Michelin-starred establishment..? It felt more like a rudimentary pub lunch than the elevated cuisine you’d expect from a place bearing such accolades. Worse still, the quality of the food was shockingly poor. Overly rich, uninspired, and plated without any flair — it was culinary monotony at its most expensive.

The dessert, if it can even be called that, was the final insult. Unmemorable, uninspired, and utterly joyless. It felt like something knocked up at the last minute, with no attention to detail or interest in delighting the diner. For a venue supposedly at the pinnacle of British pub dining, the lack of effort was staggering.

But the food was only half the disaster.

The service? Aloof and tinged with an arrogance that suggested we ought to be grateful simply to be seated there. One waiter snatched the napkin ring from the table with such haste and suspicion you’d think we were planning to pocket it. The overall attitude of the front-of-house team reeked of entitlement — as though the reputation of the restaurant absolved them from having to make any effort toward hospitality or warmth. The atmosphere was cold, the experience transactional, and the staff seemed entirely disinterested in whether guests were enjoying themselves.

It’s hard to shake the sense that Tom Kerridge and his team are simply trading on his name — banking on the public’s goodwill and affection while delivering a product that’s light-years away from its marketing. If they think this is Michelin-star standard, they’re either deluded or laughing at the customers all the way to the bank.

The truth is, there are thousands — yes, thousands — of countryside pubs across the UK serving better food, with more charm and genuine hospitality, at a fraction of the price. The Hand of Flowers is a case study in what happens when complacency meets commercial exploitation. It’s a rip-off wrapped in PR.

To those considering booking, don’t. Save your money. Go somewhere that still cares about food, service, and customer experience. The Hand of Flowers is not that place.

Tom Kerridge and his team should hang their heads in shame. They’ve forgotten what it means to earn loyalty — and more importantly, they’ve clearly...

I wasn’t going to leave a review, because our food was excellent - cooked to standard worth a star, Reeth Estate Loin of Venison was fantastic, so was the Beef ... and that treacle aroma is something special. However...

However, the comments I will leave are purely service-related points. Albeit being a pub, this place does hold a 2* recognition, making it definitely not your average-across-the-street pub. In my opinion, those 2* should also translate into details on service and attention to detail, which during our service I feel lacked:

First thing I have noticed as soon as we sat down was the gentleman sitting across at the neighbouring table. He was already enjoying his wine, yet his pre-drinks' glass wasn't cleared and was sitting there empty, until the bread basket arrived. (Long time).

At our table we noticed two pre-meal mishaps: When we were shown the menu via the QR codes, and when the time of our order came, about at the latter event we learned that only the Sunday roast was served that day (and a’la carte wasn’t). In my opinion, when a server points to a menu with multiple options, this should have been voiced at the beginning when the menu was shown. As in - “please note today we are serving only Sunday Roast menu). PS - The wifi code was neatly written under QR code so that was a cute touch.

After our menu order, I expressed that I would like a glass of wine with my main meal - and was suggested that someone will come over to discuss this/ take my order. Didn’t happen. I ordered a glass after having had starters! Shame - I may have gone for a different wine and maybe in a different price range also. But what I chose for myself worked with my meal course, so I was happy about that.

While finishing off with our starters, when I was clearly on my final bite or two, another server came over to see if we were finished with our meal. Both my partner and I found that odd, and I jokingly replied with a question: "oh, may quickly end my meal? I'll be two seconds". Awkward moment.

Tables were not cleaned between the starter and the main, when it would clearly benefit from that.

For the dessert, which we both found hilarious rather than a mishap, but in my view this is not enough attention to detail; my partners dessert choice was clearly mistaken for my selection, and so when it was brought up it had a "Happy Birthday" sign on, which clearly indented for me.

Not a quick meal - overall time for time spent: 2,5h for 3 courses.

(PPS - The green cabbage accompanying our mains was DELICIOUS).

To sum this up: in my opinion, luxury is made up of small tiny details, human attention, this is what makes one to come back again and again. And it lacked that final 'oomph'...