The Royal Oak Inn — Restaurant in England

We chose to have lunch here as has more review stars that the other pub in Charmouth. The pub was run by wife front of house and husband in the kitchen. I rarely order a starter but had my head turned by the crab arancini on the specials board. They looked delicious when served but sadly no taste or sight of crab, chef had added a very strong tasting ingredient, almost like garlic salt or something, which was the dominant flavour and I could taste nothing else, including the truffle mayonnaise. They were disappointing, I mentioned it to the chap who collected the plate and he said sorry and that was that.. for main we again ordered from the specials board, I had silver mullet with Spanish style tomato stew. The fish was cooked perfectly, but for me, the stew was a bit dense, it could have been loosened out a bit with maybe a good slug of olive oil, and a little sugar to sweeten the tomato, especially against the earthy flavour of the mullet, it just needed a bit of a lift. My husband had ribeye steak, the dish was nicely presented, but the very thick chips were not to his liking, I tried one they were quite soft, not really like chips, they were too big for chips, we thought the steak was on the small side at £24.99, but have to say really good to have the pepper sauce served as part of the dish, not like other places that change extra. We were asked if we wanted dessert and we decided to push the boat out and share a one, although we were asked by the landlady to decide as quickly as possible as the kitchen closed 30 minutes ago! I'm certain it wasn't meant to be rude but it came across a little bit so, the desert was however very nice. The bill was just shy of £90 although that's with a couple of large wines and beers too. After spending that amount on lunch we didn't come away a happy as we'd liked. The food wasn't bad, just not quite there. They are obviously working very hard and I wish...

I will say that our review is not that positive because we came with a lot of expectations as they stated on the website they won ‘best dining pub of the south west’ in 2021. Unfortunately we were quite underwhelmed. Staff was friendly. We had the port & stilton mushrooms and the garlic and chili prawns for starters, and these were very good. My husband had the pork belly which was excellent as well. Very nice that they state all the local suppliers they use. Very reasonably priced. Although friendy, staff could be better trained. I had the hot chicken sandwich and this was not good. Something must’ve gone wrong with the pickled sauce. It was way too strong and stung eyes and nose. I couldn’t finish it… It’s not at all a cosy pub when you enter. 3 guests were sitting with their coats on, it was really chilly inside. One last - in our opinion - very weird thing is that you can’t book a table, you have to request one. Then they take a few days to assess (on which terms? very curious about that…) if you get a table. Felt very unwelcoming for us. We just persisted in the booking because our cottage for the week was literally accross the street and it felt silly...

Had a family meal here (8 of us). I would say it's OK, not great or exceptional. The menu is quite small/limited. There are no salad options at all which we were very surprised at. The food was average. When we visited the service was quite slow and sporadic,the meals came out in dribs and drabs so some of our meals were only warm when we came to eat them together. One of us ordered the pie, which wasn't a pie, it is a stew with a moulded pastry crust simply planted on the top. The menu said it came with seasonal vegetables, that consisted of frozen peas and green beans. We were seated on a rounded bench with some additional chairs but they didn't have enough chairs (they said they didn't have any more spare!) to evenly seat the 8 of us so 5 people were squashed on the bench (absolute maximum of 4 comfortably) with 3 on chairs. This affected the eating experience as there wasn't enough arm space to eat comfortably. I would not not return but do think they need to improve some elements of the dining experience, including...