The Royal Oak — Restaurant in England

Extremely POOR service! I visited here for some lunch with my family and children and it was the worst decision I made.

Upon arrival with my party of 7 I asked for a table outside and asked if someone would come out and take the order and I was told that I needed to order at the bar. I had no issue with this whatsoever.

Upon ordering the food at the bar, I also ordered drinks and was presented with a dirty tray with our drinks on it and was told I needed to take this to the table myself. I told the bar staff that I was disabled and asked if they could bring it out for me.

When the waitress brought the drinks out (still on the dirty tray) we were missing 2 glasses for the 2 bottles of water we ordered. When I asked for some glasses the waitress said that it was busy, they didn’t have any clean ones and to wait and then I would need to go back inside to get some. It was a good job I asked because she never even addressed the fact.

When the food finally came out, the waitress just put the starters on the table not even asking who they were for. The rest of the meals came out but there was no cutlery. When I asked for these I was told “I suppose I can go back in and get them for you”. I had also asked for sauces, etc and she came back out with the bottles empty. This meant that I then had to ask the waitress again for these and she went marching off.

I’m sorry, but when I go for a meal I do not expect to be made to feel that I am putting the staff out. They are getting paid. Plus I paid £114 for the meals. I am not sure if the level of service is reduced if you sit outside, compared to inside, but no one actually told me this so I am unsure. However, if this is the case and the expectation is that they ONLY bring you the food, and you have to get your own cutlery, condiments, etc, then at least reduce the meal prices for customers sat outside who are not receiving this basic level of service. Honestly, this is the minimum I would expect when going for a meal.

The waitress was very rude, had a face on her and made us feel as though we were putting her out! Not the environment I want to sit in when trying to enjoy a meal. It’s not surprising though, as you pay for your meal before you actually eat it, so she doesn’t have any incentive to provide good service for tips, etc. I am just thankful that her pay isn’t dependent on tips because I would worry for her financial welfare.

To top it off, my 3 children went to play in the play area. Do not let your children do this as it is littered in glass. My son cut his finger on a piece of glass causing injury and his finger causing it to bleed. The “manager” came out to investigate and said that he could not see the glass where my son cut his finger and that my son had told him he had thrown it away in the play area. The manager was quite happy with that and walked off leaving this piece of glass in the play area. The glass was not hard to find and in fact we did find it and more and I have attached pictures of this.

When I went back in to inform the manager so he could remove the glass from the play area, he verbally attacked me and my daughter causing a scene. When we tried to leave, he followed us outside ranting and raving uncontrollably and flapping his hands up and down which was very intimidating. He said we had all been rude from the minute we walked in (untrue) and if we did not like the service then not to come back. This is NOT the attitude I would expect from a manager as this is disgusting! And from this it is clear that the staff were talking about us. If asking for glasses to drink your drinks out of and cutlery to eat your food with is “being rude” then I don’t know what is.

I intend to report this place to H&S as it is clear there is a lack of this in the play area. I wasn’t even told if they had recorded my grandsons injury in the accident book?

Save yourselves the hassle that I had to endure and if you want to go for a nice meal, go the Hand and Trumpet - better service, nicer staff, and much...

Popped in for late Sunday lunch, with an online booking... first down point: it conveniently didn't show up at 'check-in' point on arrival to our awkwardness!

Anyway, fortunately they "squeezed" us in, to what didn't look too busy/packed out. Easy choice, we wanted Sunday Lunch, so it was a matter of just choosing drinks...however, point 2:

Specifically ordered 'Pinot Grigio Blush' for my dear wife, which was " not a problem, we have that", which again seems all fair. Unfortunately they then try to palm off something nowhere near the aforementioned (probably as they possibly suspected we wouldn't know the difference from cheap plonk Rosé to Pinot Blush).

Starters were OK at best, for a simple 'Soup of the Day', but clearly just zapped in the microwave

Next point:

Sunday Lunches eventually arrive, both Roast Chicken, and initially looked good. Until, that is, we cut into the various veg and meat. Talk about overcooked! Yes, it was relatively late in the afternoon, but why state they cover Sunday Lunch all day i.e. for Lunch/Dinner?

Roast Potatoes were like you needed a chainsaw to cut through, meat was dry and Yorkshires, you could have driven a 6 inch nail into wood with them and the other Veg was lukewarm. Absolutely no amount of gravy was going to soften them up and obviously it didn't.

I could go and on, but even the restaurant section was like a greenhouse and finally it forever to get the bill when we absolutely didn't want dessert etc.

In summary, we will not be rushing back anytime soon, which is a shame, as the pub looks very eye catching on...

Decided to go here last night, (even though there were mixed reviews) for tea with the kids and the other half. They cater for vegan and gluten free, which is great for us. The atmosphere is a typical country pub/restaurant feel. We spent around £25 each on main, dessert and 2x drinks. The food was delicious 😋 we were all happy with our main meal and dessert. The only issue we had was they forgot about our dessert order. We waited around 20 minutes, as we thought "" they're busy, it'll be out soon". It wasn't until we mentioned our order still hasn't arrived, and it was out on the table within 5 minutes. There is a small play area outside for kids to enjoy and outside space if you want to eat outside under the gazebo. The staff are all friendly and polite, yes they're all quite young like someone else has mentioned before. But we had no issues with the staff, apart from forgetting out dessert order, that was quickly resolved. It's a lovely country pub decor wise, the toilets have lovely decor, in both men and womens in comparison to other places we've been. Would of been better if we were placed at another table, (we'd booked in advance) rather than given the table next to the toilets, kitchen and main entrance. A lot of traffic coming and going, which was a bit disruptive. Would we go again.....most definitely! Just place us is in the main eating area next...