The Horseshoes — Restaurant in England

We visited The Horseshoes at Uckington for the first time since its refurbishment on Saturday 29th July 2023. The Grill Pub Co. chain have invested a great deal of money into upgrading The Horshoes.

We remember The Horseshoes as it used to be as our sonwqs prematurely born in Shrewsbury We used to go visit him in the unit after work and call into The Horseshoes afterwards . That was sometime ago as our son is now a 6ft 9inch tall 26 year old .

We had planned to eat in Wales but a bad traffic accident had delayed us . So we were lucky to get a table at the busy Horshoe as we were passing .

The place is very comfortable and the tables are well spaced out . The bar had 2 real ales on which are badged beers for the Grill Pub Co - I think they might be brewed by the MBH brewery in Cheshire but the very busy bar staff did not know where it was brewed. I had a decent Fruity Golden ale badged as 'Summit'. The food was OK but I think because of the busy nature of the place the Fillet steak was rather overdone rather than being ' well done' . Her meal was rather salty with both the Fillet steak and chips having been cooked /prepared with too much salt . (This does seem to be a trend as a similar meal at The Redhouse , Lilleshall was also presented in the same way) . My Shepherds Pie was nice and my son enjoyed his Belly Pork although his sauce was brought over the meal rather than in a seperate jub as requested. The waitress took his meal back and rectified the problem five minutes later.

The other point is the cleanliness of the toilets. The toilets are modern , tiled and spacious but unfortunately the sinks in the toilets were rather unclean round the plug holes . The gents toilets also had at least six pieces of ancient chewing gum on the floor and tiles which has obviously been there for some considerable time .

We were happy to visit this comfortable and welcoming place but a few tweaks are needed to raise The Horseshoe to a 5* review. We would like to return and enjoy quality food in hygienic surroundings in the future- hopefully rewriting this review ! ( Copy to be emailed to The Grill...

EDIT: We were given the opportunity to return to rectify the below review.

I am pleased to say we had a wonderful meal, food was much better and the staff were great!

Thank you The Horseshoes.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: Went on opening night in 2022 and couldn’t fault the place. Beautiful interior design, garden would be great in summer, looks fab but most recent visit didn’t live up to expectations.

Food took quite a while to arrive despite being fairly quiet (only us and approx 3 other tables), the gammon meals looked like they belonged at a Hungry Horse pub, and the Caesar Salad one of us chose had barely any lettuce so we had to ask for more, in addition to that they had run out of Parmesan so the salad was offered with cheddar! (A Caesar salad is a standard meal with standard ingredients, it’s surprising how many places get it so wrong!) This was after one of our party has explicitly asked when we sat down if there was anything not available on the menu. We were told a couple of starters were not available, but that was it. We then asked if Sunday roasts were on (it was Sunday) only to be told “not today”!!!

My meal on the menu described coming with leeks, however there weren’t any on the plate just some very soft spring onions.

Service also quite slow in general. We had asked for the bill before our plates had been cleared despite being sat finished for a good 10/15 minutes.

Staff training in general needs some work. Some of the staff excellent, all very polite, but walking away from a table that clearly has empty plates without picking any up (when the waiter had empty hands) was just not good enough. It’s like staff aren’t trained too look at what’s around and clear things that need to be cleared - that’s literally the job of waiting staff.

Won’t be rushing back...

We had Sunday lunch there for the first time January 2024 and all I can say with the upmost confidence we will not be ordering the Sunday roast ever again. We both ordered the roast beef and when it arrived we were met with our plates having a massive cabbage each in the middle of the plate with very little else such as the beef, peas, yorkie, mash and roast potatoes surrounding it. It was ridiculous having that much cabbage taking up half of the plate in a bid to make you think you were having a big roast dinner which you were not. Then there was the beef which although was thinly cut was tough as shoe leather and griserly, It was unedible so I had to spit it out and leave it. Even the peas were a travesty as they were minted and over powered the meal so they were left. So what was left to eat I hear you ask? Well I had 2 small roast potatoes, 1 small carrot a small dollop of mash and a little bit of gravy oh and 1 Yorkshire pudding to mop up with. Not bad for £17.50 eh????? Oh and get this they charge £4.50 for extra roast potatoes, £4.50 for extra carrots, and £4.50 for extra peas......PER PERSON! Would have gotten better quality/more food and cheaper if I had bought 2 of those supermarket roast dinners that you do in the microwave/oven. We have eaten here before (new years eve)and the food was ok but the Sunday roast dinners needs to change big time as they were terrible. We feel they are cheapening out and cutting corners on the food. If it continues we won't go back full stop considering this place is in the middle of nowhere and you need to drive there. At no point did the staff ask if the food was OK?, if they did then I wouldn't have left a...