Old Crown — Restaurant in Lichfield

I am a regular visitor, with quite a large group, to The Old Crown for their regular Tuesday night quiz night. Many of us eat there on a regular basis, reasonable food. A short while ago we went along and my group won the quiz, so we were given a £50 voucher between 5 of us to spend at the bar, we planned to spend it on food. The voucher was due to expire 2.3.23

We turned up for the quiz last week, to be told that new Landlords had taken over and they refused to honour the £50 prize, so meals were ordered and had to be paid for. We were not advised that there would be a wait for the meals. We had to wait, individually, between an hour, and an hour and a half for our meals. Each meal was brought out individually, none of us managed to eat together, the chef seemed to be cooking one meal at a time.

Several things were sent back, garlic bread was only cooked on one side, returned to the kitchen and came back the same. Peas were like bullets, some people's meals were cold. Portions were very tiny. Scampi came out with only 6 pieces, when queried, more was bought out which was cold. A side salad consisted of lettuce, 1/8 of a tomato, 2 tiny slithers of onion and cucumber. One of our party ordered food, after one hour of waiting for it someone came from the kitchen and told her they had since run out of that item and would she like something else. She decided she would rather not wait another hour, requested a refund, which has taken 5 days to come through, and purchased a packet of crisps instead.

Discussion with the quiz master was pointless, despite us believing he was behind the prizes, he confirmed it's down to the landlord as to whether he honours the prize.

A similar discussion with the new Landlord resulted in a response stating that the voucher cannot be honoured, as the Pub has now changed Landlords. But the prize was given by Marston's, not the previous Manager, so we felt this was incorrect.

He stated that he would have a discussion with his area Manager about the voucher and would let one of us know the outcome. 5 days later, we are still awaiting a response.

For the very near future my group have decided to stop eating there and attending the quiz, we will maybe return and try again when the new Landlords have gained some experience, apparently they have no previous experience...

Hmm, it's ok, a work in progress. Phoned and booked, 4 attempts, over hour and half till the phone was picked up! Quite on arrival and all evening, on entrance there's a bar/booking desk with a wall separating the main bar area, with the table book and card machine so we waited there to be greeted and to be shown to our table, nothing happening, after a couple of minutes a punter suggested coming round as the 2 staff were in discussion. Showed our table, drinks and food ordered at the bar. Standard pub food, 3 courses, all ok, but when we come to the sweet, and told the cook's finishing 8 o'clock so if you want a sweet, get your turbo trotters on! Ok, new tenants learning the ropes, but either let your punters know on arrival the cook's off early, not with 5 minutes to go! I think we'll go back, but will be asking if not told, if we'll be on the clock to finish? p.s. i say cook as a chef prepares from scratch, this was the usual prepared chain pub grub, for an example the White Lion down the road, 2nd to none in...

I went with my friend for a meal last night to have a good catch up we hadn't booked seen the good reviews for this pub and thought let's give it a go. Wish we hadn't bothered. We ordered lasagne and salad. When the meal arrived the Lasagne was stone cold in the middle so we sent it back and when it returned it was exactly the same fresh salad put on the plate and the Lasagne was cold again. We were told the second time it was as hot as it should be so that is cold then. Who eats cold Lasagne not us. Myself and my friend said we didn't want another one. Nobody came out to speak to us. The lady behind the bar was lovely and you could see she cared but nobody else came and spoke to us. I wanted to leave and go somewhere else but we stayed and had Gammon can't do much wrong with that. We were given our last 2 drinks free and that was it. We will not be returning. So disappointed and no customer service skills at this pub...