The Red Lion — Restaurant in England

101 of how not to run a pub. Rang for a last minute table on a Sunday and was told to come down, it'll be fine. After arriving and hovering by the bar for a little longer than expected, I was "greeted" by what I can only assume was the manager, and was told "yeah sit down wherever you can find" after doing a lap of the establishment, and wanting to avoid children, my party and I sat down, after 15 or so minutes we managed to grab the attention of someone behind the bar, as we knew we all wanted a roast we ordered food along with our drinks. Around 5 minutes after this, the hagrid looking "manager" asked us for our food order, to which we politely informed her that we had just ordered with her colleague. After whipping out her chained ipad, and told that "you ain't ordered food" her computer companion obviously refreshed and we were told in fact we had ordered. Precisely 8 minutes later our roasts arrived, this quite rightly worried me. For £20 I expect a roast to be good, but I can comfortably say I had better at school. Potatoes had clearly been under a lamp for hours, and were as crispy as a sock, unpeeled carrots, leeks were served raw and a watery gravy. The beef was acceptable at best. A real shame as the food used to be good here.

If you can't cope with roasts past 5pm, then stop like most other pubs! Also the shocking service really needs addressing, customers should not have to bear the brunt of clearly grumpy and overworked staff. A smile...

The outdoor area was nearly totally empty, and we brought a small group of guests from outside the UK to the outdoor seating area of the pub. We were socially distancing, but she implied we were not following the rules. We were served, but the landlord was aggressive and hostile towards us, and even had a go at us, after taking our money, for 'using up outdoor space and discouraging other customers'. Three other tables were free, and that seemed like a very poor excuse for outright rudeness. Sad, as it would otherwise be a lovely pub. Just make sure you're not 'the wrong sort of people'!

Edit: their argument now seems to be that although we bought a full round of drinks, we didn't spend enough money to warrant spending 20 minutes sitting sandwiches at some outdoor picnic tables in an outdoor eating area, at a half empty. At no point were we informed that ordering food was possible, and we weren't presented with a food menu, only drinks. We were only treated to a lecture about how we needed to move on, for the sake of the British hospitality industry. I leave prospective customers to be the...

We had a really lovely dinner here last night. The soup of the day was one of my favourites, broccoli and stilton, and didn't disappoint along with fresh grain toasted bread and plenty of butter. Delicious! My sister had the potted shrimp and likewise said it was a good flavour. I had the burger (haven't had one in ages) and it too was lovely and hot. Fries, coleslaw and a chilli sauce made it a big meal and I certainly felt a bit stuffed afterwards (but my fault for eating it all!). Importantly (for us anyway) we had a brand new good quality ketchup and Hellman's mayo to use, which we liked. My sister's red mullet was deliciously moist and the wine list was easy to choose from with a couple of favourites available by the glass. One very minor point was that the table we were at had no light apart from a small tea light candle so it did get a bit dark as time went by. But not a real issue, more a practical one. Good and very friendly and efficient service too. Highly...