The Bray — Restaurant in Guildford

Nice pub, food satisfactory in one case, not in the other, over-priced sadly. A complaint handled beautifully.

Positives:

Pleasant environment, nice decor, gentle buzz Friendly staff A complaint - over-cooked chicken schnitzel - dealt with beautifully and professionally

Negatives

Prices for mains much too high - £26 for a small (I mean small) fillet of fish and around 5 little potatoes and a small amount of veg. Naughty. If it’s a chain pub then the chain is pushing it, but of course, it’s for the punter to say yes or no! Other mains were cheaper, but some solid ones ie meat were hovering around the £30 mark, so even higher than £26!

For devilment, I’ve just looked at the price of a fish main in the village’s double AA rosette restaurant, Kingham’s, and for exactly the same price, £26, one can have a beautiful Cornish cod dish. So personally, if I want to pay £26 for a fish main, I’d want it to be beautiful food in a restaurant setting….

For a pub to sell what was a satisfactory, ok, no more, not good,or very good, or excellent, and small, fish main course at the same price as what is probably a superior (and possibly bigger) fish dish in an AA rosette restaurant seems to be a charming form of robbery to me! Yes, we have a choice…but sadly I didn’t check out the prices before booking a table. Lesson learnt.

My chicken schnitzel was over-cooked and I had to wait for a second, while my father ate. It was ok, satisfactory, but no more. For £18 for 2 pieces of chicken, some leaves and dressing and the odd bit of Parmesan, the chicken should be very good. And mine plural were dried-out and then ok.

The complaint was handled...

Having happily been to the white Horse in Shere previously we decided to book and try the William Bray. On arrival just before 5pm one of our party went in to make our arrival known but was ignored until she said excuse me to a member of staff who had clearly seen her. Following this we were given menus to look at and placed our wine order, which arrived promptly. When we had chosen our starters and main courses the waiter then told us that some of the main courses were no longer available so we chose again... Then the main courses arrived !!! I pointed out that we had not had our starters yet and that once we had had our starters we did not want the same main courses back simply reheated. After a few minutes the waiter returned and apologised that the squid starter was no longer available and that the other starters had not been conveyed to the kitchen either....We were then asked if we would take the mains and swap the starters for deserts instead, the party were not really desert people so this was declined, at this point we decided that enough was enough and we would take our custom back to the White horse. A bottle of wine was taken off the bill which we paid and then left. It's a nice setting and the staff were polite and apologetic, however...... the management need to seriously look at how the place is run, and let customers know what is not available when the menus are given out. We were very disappointed and it was not...

Felt like an episode of kitchen nightmares from start to finish. Ok.. firstly yes it was certainly busy on arrival however systematic errors/failures even when by the end of my experience today the place was nee empty and still terrible. You’d be lucky to get a drink here let alone food. Took a small age for the staff to firstly offer drinks and bring around the menu stands. Once ordered (15 mins later) after spotting a member of staff by chance a further 1.5 hours later still no food (2 burgers) yup that’s it. Only after a member of staff at the 1.5 hour mark came and asked what we ordered I guess the kitchen/servers /whomever worked out someone had not put our order through. After that no feedback as to the location of our food/ eta of arrival and then finally arrived but then left waiting a further 15 minutes for the drinks we had ordered when the food arrived. By this time the place had only a couple tables left occupied. No apology/ no acceptance of sheer failing and to top it off no discount on the bill even after such a wait. To be hit with a 10% service charge on top auto added to the bill. I could here Ramsay swearing a mile away. Shut down, start again. Put some form of management in place as this place is a hugely expensive, horrific service and a complete failing in management. I feel for those tables like us waiting for an age to have some interaction with staff to order or even just to pay to enable...