White Willow — Restaurant in England

A further visit listed below - not so good this time!

Helpful staff, food very good, service could be a little quicker AND WHY only one proper beer - you have 8 pumps! At least your other site, The Bear, often has a guest ale?

Edit:

Just had another visit with friends and very disappointing - probably should downgrade the stars but I am hoping it was a one off? Any way, this is the feed back review they asked for -

We are regular visitors and have had some enjoyable meals previously although as I commented in a previous review it is disappointing to only have one ale available with all those empty pumps on the bar! For this visit we brought some friends and unfortunately it was a rather poor experience. First of all there was a problem so there was no Prestige on tap. We were told that bottled Shipyard or Prestige were available so we ordered Shipyard then were told you actually only had Prestige! We all ordered roasts and my wife and I also ordered our usual Cauliflower cheese addition. When the meals arrived I noted that none contained the usual Parsnips? I queried this and was told none were available and were offered an extra piece of Carrot as an alternative. Surely this is not a professional attitude - to supply a meal with one of the constituents missing and hoping it would go unnoticed? As it happens three of us love roast Parsnips so we did notice! Obviously we should have been informed when the order was placed? Then the Cauliflower cheese arrived which comprised two scrawny small pieces, overcooked and with virtually zero cheesy sauce, looking lost in the bottom of the dish! Obviously I asked for a replacement and was subsequently informed they had run out. So, we obviously got the last scraps from the tray served up as a normal portion! All in all, a very disappointing visit and we almost felt cheated? I made our concerns known when I paid the bill but the attitude seemed to be that we should be grateful that we were refunded the Cauliflower cheese (!!!!) and we had one of your 30% codes for the meals and "did not know we had no Parsnips or Cauliflower cheese" Perhaps your kitchen staff should keep front of house staff a little more informed and not serve a sub-standard portions hoping the paying customer...

The staff were polite and friendly and the place generally feels clean with a nice atmosphere. However the service was extremely slow, we waited 40 mins for our starters and a further 30 for our mains. The only thing that came promptly were the desserts. It did not appear to be busy, but I could only see 3 staff for the whole place. The starter tasted good and was presented nicely but I would say over priced at 7 quid for halloumi fries. The cauliflower wings were lovely but neither starter came with the roasted garlic mayo advertised. The mains I would say were definitely over priced. I was glad I had come with a voucher. I had the signature flatbread with halloumi kebab, it was definitely not worth the £16. The kebab had precisely 3 small pieces of halloumi so I basically ended up with a mediocre flatbread with a tonne of wilting salad and then a few pieces of roasted veg and 3 bits of halloumi. I couldn’t understand why it was priced similarly to the meat which is obviously more expensive to produce. My son enjoyed his burger. My daughter ate off the kids menu and the mash with the sausages was in a round patty and my daughter didn’t really want to eat it. The desserts were faultless and delicious. Over all I would say not worth the prices on the menus, and even with a voucher I wasn’t thrilled with what it had cost me. If thinking about visiting maybe go for drinks...

The staff were courteous, the food provided was enjoyed and the service prompt and attentive despite the continuous stream of renovation workers through the dining area and the re-siting of a barrier which gave more of a feeling of being in a works canteen rather than a restaurant. We ate from the lunch menu but I did not spot any reference on the menu to the fact that there were ordering conditions in order to obtain the meal at the 2-course and 3-course rates. I therefore ordered the main course for our party first indicating my assumption that we could order any desserts later. However when I went to order the desserts the full price was allocated to each - a total of £25.25. When I pointed this out the young man who appeared to have some authority offered to reduce the dessert bill by 28% (he said 30% but if you apply a 20% reduction and then apply a further 10% to the residue that does not provide 30% off the original bill) which was "the best he could do". So we have the situation that if 2 tables of 4 people order the same meal we had but one does not order everything together they would be charged £71.00 instead of the 4 x £14.25 = £57.00. The "concession" provided to us reduce the deficit from £14.00 to £6.93 but I still believe that Trading Standards would deem this to be...