The Pilot — Restaurant in England

As soon as you walk in you can tell that The Pilot is a true local pub. People know each other and it is well used by the community.

I'm based in Hornchurch, on the East London / Essex border, but my Dad's cousin Joy and her husband, Ron, have lived in Canford Heath for many years and have been coming to The Pilot regularly since they first moved to the estate and with such fantastic portion sizes at such a good price you can easily understand why!

In addition to the carvery, they do have a menu of standard meals you can order. None of this is fancy / fine dining, but if you want good quality food at a decent price, you won't find any reasons to complain at The Pilot.

We all had the carvery on this visit and it was really good. The roast potatoes were amazing!

The entire pub was clean, well lit and had ample tables for diners and drinkers, plus two pool tables which are clearly well used.

Staff are friendly and helpful and the toilets were very clean and nicely decorated.

Architecturally, this isn't the most exciting building to look at from the outside - it's a standard, modern pub, built for the estate, which is also fairly bland, but inside it feels much nicer thanks to the decor - loads of vintage radio casings and signs which give the place character.

We came in via the side door, which is up two steps. I didn't see if the main entrance is wheelchair accessible, but I would say there is sufficient room inside to get round easy enough, provided it wasn't really busy. Also didn't notice if they had an accessible toilet, but I wasn't looking - call to check this in advance if...

Community pub... The way a pub should be. Great food for incredible prices, service fast and friendly, locals welcoming. Love a game of pool here and at 50p a go shows the care for community here.

Ales are some of the best I've ever had, poured to the highest standard. Genuinely anyone that appreciates ale can see and taste the difference. These lines must be immaculate. The portion size is perfect enough you can't eat it all without being over the top. As a salad lover the side salad is top notch. The variety of fresh produce and French dressing is crisp fresh and best I've had in pub in years. Wonderfully the New Inn in Oakdale has equally great food now... Turns out same management.

So grateful to have to wonderful pubs now locally. As a newbie to Oakdale its so refreshing the locals, people, pubs staff and mgrs provide such a fab community feel.

A must visit. Try the stone baked pizzas... You can take half home for later...

So impressed. The warmth is...

Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to rate the food as the services was REALLY bad so we left. We had booked a table for 3 plus a high chair. On arrivel we had to wait at the bar to ask where our table was but was unfortunately unable to get served so we asked a waitress who told us that our table that was reserved had been taken by some other people who had taken away the reserved sign a few minutes before. She didn't ask them to move yet walked off and left us standing around so we went and asked a lady behind the bar who also didn't ask them to move and said we have to find another table but there wasn't any so when we asked for the table by the window she replied "no sorry that table is reserved" we then said we will go elsewhere and she said ok sorry... We were SO angry as we were told it was a great place to have Sunday lunch but the service was extremely poor hence why I am...