The Oarsman, Marlow — Restaurant in England

Service was impeccable and food was amazing. We had the little truffle puffs and whitebait to start. Lovely! Light as a feather choux with a rich truffle filling. The whitebait were a good size, had a crispy coating and came with a garlic mayo. What's not to like?Mains were the cod & bavette with a side of broccoli salad.

The broccles were a revelation. Fresh and light and packed with flavour.

The bavette was perfectly cooked. Juicy and flavoursome throughout with a lovely bitter edge and that lovely garlic butter sauce. I swapped my chips out for some potato bites. I wasn't sure what to expect and was very pleasantly surprised! I think this was a very finely sliced potato with butter and stock (like lyonaisse), compressed, cut into chips and fried. Just amazing.

The cod was cooked perfectly. Moist with a little bite, couldn't ask for better. It came with a brown shrimp salad and a crostini. Basically fish-and-chips with prawn cocktail, but that's doing it an injustice. Very clever and full of flavour.

We had the almond clafoutis and pannetone pudding for dessert. There's a big size difference between the two - the clafoutis being larger with generous toppings. Both tasted fantastic. Great to see something other than sticky-toffee-pudding on the dessert menu.

Really, I think this might be the best dining experience I've had without a michelin star. At £120 for two with drinks, this is a steal. Will definitely...

I really didn't want to give a negative review so emailed The Oarsman direct to make my comments known. I did get a reply. However, it was generic, unsympathetic and made me feel as if I were in the wrong. We popped in there for lunch during the week, it was late, so quite empty. I had the fish soup, which was pleasant and my husband ordered the mussels as a main course. I have never seen so few mussels in a pie dish, not even as a starter. The meal was padded out with fancy (not very nice) butter and some toasted bread. In our experience mussels normally come in a saucepan where the lid acts as a shell depot and there's a finger bowl. No such thing, and expensive. And to cap it all, we ordered two glasses of wine, one of which cost £22 for the Maison Saint Aix - a whole bottle only retails at around £15 - not quite sure why we ordered it, it was a rip off. So to sum up our lunch, the service was average, the food average, ambience average and the cost far too expensive for what it was. We're...

What a surprise! Recommended to me by a local. Restaurant was busy for after 9pm on Monday night. Sat in the bar for 2 rounds of not inexpensive but very interesting and excellently executed International small plates/bites. House Merguez sausage was bold with a hot Dijon. Spicy lamb taco on a roti-like tortilla; the guacamole was good but took any heat away from the filling. Empanada pastry was absolutely perfectly tender; impressive it didn’t fall apart! The potatoes weren’t chips but a creative deepfried potato millefeuille stick, like dauphinois without cream. The extremely thin layers crisped up beautifully at the edges. The lamb crispy croquettes packed a lovely cumin punch, but shame the garnish wasn’t a touch more acidic. Really impressive creative approach to some classics; most surprisingly in Marlow. Going back for more of the menu, but the beers could be a little ‘craftier’. Nice, friendly, knowledgeable service. As you can see, it...