Oast & Squire Beefeater — Restaurant in Fareham

This is a lovely and friendly Beefeater! The staff are great although service cancelled be a little slow at busier times. On average, I find a 3 course meal takes 2 to 3 hours here, from starter to dessert. They give you plenty of time to order, nothing is rushed. Coffee is offered after the meal. The background music isn't too loud, it's nice to listen to, but a little outdated. It suits the atmosphere here, which is always brilliant.

The Oast is a large pub. It has a ground floor bar area (with TV), accessed by one step up, and a large upper section that is accessed in places by sets of 3 or 4 stairs. The handrails always feel a bit sticky (maybe they are supposed to be?) but the tables are always clean. There's space between tables, so each table isn't too near another.

Drinks: The bar has a decent selection of tap beers, with Doombar on tap or bottled. It has a good selection of spirits and soft drinks, including zero alcohol beers too. Table water is available upon request. They offer free refills of low sugar/sugar free draft soft drinks ("Zero" drinks) with your meal.

Food: The food is good! It's a decent menu of steaks, burgers and pub meals, all cooked well. In particular, the steaks are good here. It is a Beefeater after all! The cooking of the steaks is consistently good; you'll get the temperature you ask for 4/5 times, plus they taste really good too. The mixed grill is happily more of a challenge than a meal, but I guess this depends on your appetite! Please note that even though this is a Beefeater, there is a good selection of vegetarian food and there are vegan options too, including meat alternatives.

It's a clean pub with clean facilities and is perfect for a cup of tea or coffee and lunch too. The servers here are friendly and well trained. They know the menu and are attentive but not overly so. They won't make you feel rushed when deciding what to order. You get your drinks quite quickly, ordered from your table after you are seated when having a meal. You can lower the cost of your meals here with a Beefeater card. It provides you with vouchers that are relevant and actually offer decent discounts. For example, my family (of 6) uses vouchers for free starters and desserts.

In all, you won't find fine cuisine here but what you do get is a good meal at a reasonable price and an atmosphere that's very enjoyable. People always seem to enjoy their time here!

Pros: Big tables for big families and tables away from the bar area and speakers too. I'd definitely recommend booking a table (book online or phone), especially on a Sunday afternoon. There's nothing to entertain children here, although this is subjective! The outside tables are in a high-enough fenced area, so young children can't run into the carpark. There's smoking allowed outside and ashtrays provided on the tables. Music is played from an outside speaker. It's really nice outside on a sunny day! The roof provides part shelter from the rain (it doesn't extend over the tables) and there's a door that takes you in/out of the bar area, more convenient than using the main entrance. The main entrance takes you directly to the 'wait to be seated' desk, where you're greeted quickly.

Cons: Not many! The size of the Ladies toilet cubicles are a somewhat narrow. The salad is a little boring, it really needs a dressing!

Update: multiple salad dressings...

Nice place, friendly staff, some decent food and generally a pretty good place to eat. Bit more expensive than the nearby Harvester, but not by much now that Harvester have changed their menu and got rid of their 'early bird' offers. Started going there more regularly now - they got hooks of my email address somehow and seem to regularly send out money off vouchers which make the visits more affordable for a family on a budget...

UPDATE 3 May

I and my family have been regular customers of the Oast & Squire for a number of years now. I rarely drink alcohol, and I don't smoke. The only 'vice' I really could be said to have is that I like to have a nice cold 'full fat' Pepsi or Coca Cola whenever I eat a meal out.

I appreciate that the Government has instituted this ridiculous 'tax' on sugary drinks as a knee-jerk reaction to the number of obese people out there (but not on sweets, ice cream, sugary foods etc for some reason) and that as a result companies are required to charge more for sugary drinks, however...

The required increase is something around 13 or 14% per drink, meaning that a Pepsi that originally cost, say, £2, would now be around £2.20 to £2.30. Beefeater's closest rival, Harvester, have dealt with this by charging £3.10 for diet drinks (with free refills) and £3.30 for 'full fat' (again with free refills). Beefeater, however, have simply STOPPED giving free refills on 'full fat' Pepsi.

Everyone knows that companies price 'refill' drinks on an average of how many refills people will have - at £2.90, I can assume someone in Beefeater's financial planning department worked out the average to be 2 to 3 refills - and so they are already charging more for the product, ergo: the refills are not, in fact, 'free'. This means that by keeping the price the same, but removing the refills, for someone like me who usually consumes - on average - 2 to 3 drinks during my meal, I'm actually paying 200 to 300% more than I previously would have for my drinks, which is clearly FAR more than the Government's required increase!

So, ignoring the fact that these drinks literally cost the company just pennies per glass anyway (consisting as they do of a tiny amount of syrup mixed with soda water) how can they justify gouging loyal customers in this way??

Until they reconsider their pricing - either have a slightly higher price for a Pepsi refill, but keeping the free refills, or stopping the free refills but losing the 'refill price' (ie: going back to something more reasonable, like £1.50 a glass) - my family will be having our meals out at the local Harvester instead, because while I accept that businesses must follow rules set down by the Government, I can't stomach companies that use tax increases as an excuse to rip their customers off; fuel companies do it all the time, unfortunately I can't avoid the fact that I need to buy fuel. I don't, however, NEED to eat at the Beefeater, and so I won't be doing so again until they rethink their rip-off soft...

Awful experience from start to finish. I have been going to Beefeaters for years now and always had great service especially from the Rusty Cutter, hence I did not think that things would be so different at the Oast and Squire. How wrong could I have been. It started from the time we walked in. The manager showed us to our table but raced away not taking into account that we had an elderly person in our party so we had to hunt for our party because we had not a clue as to where they had been sat.

We were told who our waiter/ess was going to be and sat and waited. After a while the manager came back to see if we had been served and of course we had to tell her no. She took our drinks order. When that turned up it was incomplete and drinks were missing. After another age the waiter eventually turned up and took our order. The order eventually came. One roast dinner had no vegetables on the plate. They brought me Roast Beef instead of Lamb and the Mixed grill that was ordered with a larger size piece of steak although charged the extra on the bill came with a normal size steak. In fact they did not manage to get one persons order correct. Needless to say I have told them that I will be writing this review and I that I certainly will not...