The Hope Inn — Restaurant in Lewes

I really like this pub, it's in a great location overlooking Newhaven harbour, and sits in the shadow of the old Napoleonic fortress above. I went there recently for dinner, and was surprised to find it was steak night. I like a good steak, so I asked about it, and was told it was rump. Hmm... but okay, if prepared properly and cooked properly, it can be nice. I noticed there was a big selection of accompanying sauces, and at the bottom of the list was Jack Daniels sauce! I had to give it a go! I made two big mistakes that evening. The first was to order the steak, which was a full 2 inches thick when it arrived. I asked for it to br 'medium', and the middle was near raw! I had to butterfly it and send it back to the kitchen for more cooking. Besides this, small matter, every single mouthful had loads of grissle and fat that I had to fish out of my mouth with my fingers. Every chef knows to trim the bad bits off before serving up a steak! The larger of the two mistakes was the Jack Daniels sauce, which must have been 50 to 60 % sugar. As my dinner cooled slightly, the sauce started to form sugar sculptures on my plate, and behaving like super sweet glue! By the end, I couldn't even pick up a chip or a piece of broccoli as they were 'sugar glued' to my plate! What a disaster. I honestly think that any other dish on the menu would probably have been fine and tasty, but for the love of God, do not order the steak or the JD sauce!!! Hope Pub management... if you are reading this, please send your chef back to chef school! In all other respects, I love this pub. Super friendly, attentive staff, great location, log...

Unfortunately our visit to The Hope Inn today wasn’t a great experience, when we arrived it wasn’t that busy, but was told by a staff member there was a 20 minute wait to be able to order food due to there being loads of people in for lunch and a freezer that stopped working at the weekend. We was happy to wait the 20 mins and ordered drinks. We was told about a table that was available but due to there not being enough staff to cater for customers, someone else sat at our table. We were then informed that there was a upstairs conservatory that we could sit in, but a staff member would come up when the kitchen was taking food orders. After about 25-30 minutes we gave up waiting, so I went downstairs to order food, to then be told that they were sold out of the pies, cod, fish cakes and steak. Today is mine and my partner’s anniversary and The Hope Inn was the first place we went for dinner together 2 years ago, so we travelled the 30 mile round trip for what should have been a great meal out! Feeling very disappointed and annoyed. I would recommend that in the future the staff inform their customers of the items they don’t have on the menu at the time of arrival, because if we had known that the items we were going to eat weren’t available we wouldn’t have waited and could have gone elsewhere in...

It's a couple of years since we visited this establishment. It was then basic pay as you order at the bar pub grub, and very acceptable. It is now table service. We looked for a quiet area as the music was rather loud and asked if it could be turned down. Later we asked again if the volume could be reduced to be told it had been but certainly not to our ears! On checking, our waiter said the veggie pie was butternut squash and something (couldn't hear for the music) so I went for that. My husband ordered onion bhaji burger. We also ordered a bottle of "house" wine. The food was piping hot, mine had three side veg but the savoy was very undercooked. The "butternut squash and something" pie turned out to be lentil and chickpea, tasty but where was the butternut squash? When the bill came we were surprised to see the bottle of "house" (Pinot grigio 10.5%) wine was charged at £24.50. One wonders what we would have been charged for the other wines? Food had been good although not totally what was ordered, wine somewhat expensive and music too loud for us. At no point were we asked whether everything was or had been ok, but we were asked whether we would give a tip. Usually we do, but was it mean of us to decline on...