The Impeccable Pig — Restaurant in England

I'm sat at the table with my wife. It's our wedding anniversary. We booked an early table so we could enjoy 4 courses, and at least 2 bottles of wine, probably3. We deliberately arrived early, to not put pressure on them, and for us not to be rushed. It all started well, bottle of wine, split a pizza for the 1st course. We are 25 minutes in. Now it goes from sublime to ridiculous...

We are ready to order starters and another bottle of wine, my wife likes oysters, especially smaller ones, not the large fatty ones, and asks the server what size the oysters are. In the US, they are size scaled. The server doesn't know, asks a lady we assume her boss, who doesnt know, so they ask the chef who says, and I quote " we don't know until we open them"

Ok we say, we will take a chance, order oysters for my wife, and soup for me.

Our server asks us to order our entrees, we say we would like to order them after our appetizers, aa we are not sure what we will have. We are told that's not possible, we must order the main course now, because the restaurant will get busy.

We politely question this, explain we would like to take our time, we have only been here 25 mins, the bill with 2 bottles of wine and 4 courses is going to over 300. We are not sure after eating the soup and oysters if we will hungry enough for a large steak, or may only want a lighter fish dish.

Unfortunately they say we have to order both courses now, or skip the appetizers, so we skip appetizers.

We will also be skipping the second and 3rd bottle of wine, and dessert, we almost walked out and didnt order a main course.

Was close to 1 star, gave 2 stars because the pizza we split was delicious, and after having to skip appetizers, the fish I ordered was great, although I had to eat it alone, as my wife ordered a medium steak which came out blue, cold, uncooked.

As it's our anniversary, she got to gaze at me lovingly for 15 minutes while I ate my fish, and then 20 mins later I got to gaze at her lovingly while she eats her steak alone. I mean alone in every sense of the word, not only had I finished my dinner earlier, but the sides that accompanied the now beautifully cooked steak were raw. Raw fries, completely inedible.

We have already booked another local Italian restaurant for 630pm to have dessert and a couple of bottles of wine.

Very very underwhelmed, and not how I planned to spend our wedding anniversary.

I'm posting this while I am sat here, if anyone would like to speak to me before I leave.

Our waitress asked about our experience, and I told her all of this, I also said she had been nice, o was not frustrated with her, but she might want to share this with a manager, and I showed her this review. She said, and I quote, " they do read the reviews, and I dont blame you for booking another restaurant "

Will not...

My husband and I have always wanted to come here after seeing so many beautiful pictures of the rooms on Instagram, so following our wedding we booked a room here. We stayed in “Squealers” the recently opened master suite. On arrival the room was sensational, after closer inspection though not so much. The price of our stay was just short of £500 for one night, and finishing touches for that price point were missing in abundance. Coffee sachets provided (two Nescafé sachets) were more of something we would expect at the ibis or other low price point hotel.

As the room is located at the front of the pub it was extremely noisy when people were leaving the pub and we did not get to sleep until after midnight. There is no double glazing in the windows. The rooms at the back of the pub I imagine to not have this problem, but given the most expensive rooms are at the front you would expect this to be soundproofed even slightly (again for the price point)

We went to dinner, I was told the vegan option I had asked for had “ran out”. The young girl was very lovely but did not provide an alternative until my husband requested they make something off the menu as the only other option for me was onion soup. I did get a vegan gnocci, it was okay. No vegan dessert on the menu. Interestingly, the menu also stated they are unable to cater fully to allergies due to cross contamination which in my opinion is quite lazy and concerning. I keep going back to the price but we often stay in 5* hotels for this price and it is so far away in quality of service in comparison. The room was clean, but the carpets were dirty, there was dust and some other areas that required attention.

The hallway up to our room smelt really bad. We noticed dehumidifiers on the window sill so I assume this is an attempt to rectify the smell. Is this what I expect from £485 a night.. Absolutely not.

Breakfast - we were first down, offered coffee. It came from a jug that had been pre made, luke warm. My husband had a full English and found it to be average at best (fatty bacon, grey sausage, requested toast did not arrive) Again, the young boy who served us was very lovely and dealt with our check out, we told him some of what we felt was lacking and he apologised.

Unfortunately we would would not return, and would not recommend this venue for others. The absolute basics weren’t met and surely, the one thing that should be available without having to request it is fresh coffee?!

The decor is amazing, the idea is great, but I would suggest the management of this establishment spend some time in hotels of the same price point and see what others do to justify...

The rooms are brilliant, a lot of character and I would recommend to family and friends based on the character the room has and how private this is. However, no one explains how to use the hot tub and when arriving it was freezing cold. We eventually worked out how to get it on then set off for dinner and when we got back due to it being off for so long the hot tub was simply not hot enough. I’d expect if the hotel know that room is going to be occupied, surely you would switch this on ready for the arrival of guests.

Once at dinner we found the food menu was quite basic and not a lot of choice. We couldn’t find a starter that we wanted but as you are forced to eat at the restaurant because you get given £70 for it within the price of the room, and there is not an option to just pay a room rate at a lower cost without the restaurant. I ordered scallops as my partner couldn’t find anything she wanted and when it came it had a curry sauce over the scallops which I found very strange. I don’t recall if it’s written on the menu it comes with the scallops which I could of asked without that sauce I suppose but it totally killed the starter. The main came which I ordered fillet steak which I asked for medium rare. I often eat at miller and carter and the impeccable pig menu is more expensive than miller so I expected a similar experience but it could not of been further. I had to send the steak back as it was almost blue on my plate. I showed the waitress who also agreed that was no where near medium rare. My partner got the chicken Milanese which the yellow risotto ruined her meal also and would not recommend that dish to anyone.

We had room service for breakfast which turned up ten minutes late, which is fine as I understand there are other guests to attend to also but we were missing water and toast off off what we ordered and my partners avocado on toast was freezing cold and the toast was stale on her plate. I had the mushrooms on a English muffin with the Hollandaise sauce which also came cold and the muffin had been left out where it went hard as it had been out for so long. Both left the breakfast as it was inedible. I ended up eating the yogurt just to have something. The room itself and the staff very polite, as for the dinning food and breakfast far from satisfactory and needs a...