Hogget Hook Basingstoke — Restaurant in Hart

Had dinner here on Friday with my wife for our anniversary as their menu was to our liking as we have tried a lot of BBQ food in the southern states of America and the restaurant was dog friendly so met our needs perfectly. Menu had plenty of options as did the drinks menu offering a good selection of draught beers and an equally impressive spirits menu. We opted to share a few starters (prawns, scratchings and chicken wings) and all were very good however as someone who orders wings whenever they are on a menu I found the portion for the wings was very disappointing which is a shane as they were very tasty but not really value for money. This was odd as the portion size for the rest of the food was good and with chicken being fairly inexpensive compared to other meats it usually means you get a decent portion in restaurants. For mains my wife had the pork chop and I chose the half rack of ribs. Pork chop with potatoes and Mediterranean veg was tasty and a good portion. Portion for ribs was also good however all the effort to slow cook these properly was undone by having quite a cheap tasting sauce. It was very sickly sweet and made the juicy fall off the bone pork taste like something you'd get from a supermarket sachet. In addition to this how the ribs were served to me was my biggest issue. I got each item in metal tins instead of on a a nice plate like the chop. I get that there was an attempt at presenting this like a fast food diner but we weren't in a diner so didn't appreciate this and I'd be surprised if anyone does when they eat here. On to the desert and we decided to share the apple custard and ice cream. A dessert i'd never had before and it was incredibly good and was a large portion so perfect for sharing. I'd swap the salted caramel ice cream for vanilla to make this one of the best deserts I've ever had. I'd return to Hoggets just to have this desert it was that good. Service wise it was ok. It was difficult to get hold of staff at times because they were busy and we found ourselves going to the bar to place orders a couple of times but not a massive issue as we were near the bar. Everyone was friendly when we interacted with them. Overall very pleased with our visit to Hoggets and would recommend. Would have been 5 stars if the wings and ribs were better but a solid...

Sorry to say but worst steak ever……. We stopped here after a show in Basingstoke, after reading the reviews on Google, our meal did not come anywhere close to those reviews we read. We ordered a glass of Pinot and a beer, then looked at the menu, I went for a full rack of ribs and my partner went for the flame grilled sirloin steak, medium rare with no blood. We didn’t have to wait too long for the plates to arrive, on first view my ribs looked ok but the sauce was a bit on the lame side, bit too runny, but the meat was ok, as were the skinny fries. But my partners steak on the other hand looked a bit well done, when she tried to cut it with the steak knife it was a real struggle, eventually she managed to cut through it and tried it, it was so tough she said she couldn’t even eat it, it was full of gristle too. We caught the bar persons eye they came over and we explained that the steak was unfit to be served let alone eat. They were very apologetic offered to replace but that was turned down as now put off totally by what we had, the staff person did tell us that even the chef had complained to the owners about the quality of the meat being sourced for the pub menu, but if this was the case he should have said there were no steaks rather than serving one that couldn’t be eaten, the plate was taken away and a replacement was offered but declined, my partner did agree to some ribs , but these didn’t arrive until after I had finished mine, so not a great finish to night after the fantastic show we had seen. And to top it off completely we asked for another Pinot, only to be told they had run out😤 What pub runs out of wine?? The staff did deal with problem, ie didn’t charge for the steak or extra ribs, but by then the night was ruined, they did say that they wanted to give us the drinks free, but management don’t allow it?? a little bit of free range for staff would go a long way to send people away happy even after having something so bad. Needless to say we won’t be heading back here...

Just had an amazing meal at the hogget, booked a table half an hour before arriving on a Sunday! Greeted and sat at our table straight away and had our drinks order taken and within minutes they were with us. We then ordered our starters and mains and received very quickly I had the calamari and my wife had the grilled hallomi and we had the cauliflower wings to share and these were all great full of flavour and the potions were very generous for starters. Next I had the half rack of ribs which I would say came as a full rack in some restaurants but not here it was a big portion for half and I upgraded my chips for the smokey brisket Fries and my wife had the pork belly (slab) and she also upgraded to the same fries and we shared a doorstep garlic loaf! Every month full was splendid! Then as the portions were very generous it was the tough decision of pudding :-/. My wife went for it and had the Biscoff cupcake and I could only manage 2 large scoops of mango sorbet I tried abit of the cupcake and it was really nice. During our time at the hogget we were constantly asked if we needed anything and if our meals were OK and this is brilliant the staff were all cheerful and nothing was a bother I have to say this is up there in restaurant visits, the bill was fully justify able and worth every penny highly recommended and will definitely be returning as there's so much more the menu has to offer. Also the Guinness is poured to perfection....