Renoufs Cheese and Wine Bar — Restaurant in New Forest

Wife has been to the Lymington restaurant with her friend so wanted to take me, we booked a few days in advance, no parking but that’s normal for Lyndhurst there is a car park across the road that after 6pm is free.

The venue was cramped you had to be careful not to hit people as you are finding your way through, but looks nice “quirky feel” unfortunately for us we were sat on tall stools at the bar with our back to everyone, after a long week it wasn’t the ideal seating especially as we booked in advance and wanted a bit of romantic vibe we didn’t necessarily get that but hey ho we were looking forward to the food none the less. We chose cheese and meat god knows what as so much going on around I wasn’t fussed as was starving. We ordered wine also which took a while to come as did the food but was nicely presented and once finished we were starting to enjoy ourselves.

We were given the dessert menu, ordered rhubarb crumble and sticky toffee pudding which took soo long to come, was very below bar we couldn’t believe how bad they were they really need to stop offering this as the evening could of ended in a high.

I let the waitress know when she asked how everything was of which we were apologised to, given the bill for around £90 (with the deserts on) and told to write review which I thought odd...

Great service & atmosphere but I'm sorry to say that the food didn't live up to expectations.

The menu on their website makes it look as though there is many more varieties of cheese & meat to choose from when in fact the actual restaurant only serves around 12 of the cheeses & 12 of the meats at a time & I think this needs to be made a lot more clearer.

The little chalk boards that you are presented with that show the cheese & meat on offer looked pretty worn which makes it hard to figure out how it's spelt - especially the cheese, because you either have to search the internet to find out what type of cheese it is or you have to ask a member of staff as there is no description on the board.

The cheese that is on offer is very good & I have no complaints at all but I'm afraid that the same doesn't go for the meats. It was on par with supermarket packs & looked very similar as it was very thinly sliced & very uniform. To be honest I was expecting it to be cut from the actual salami by the chef or person that prepares the board but it looked as though it had been taken straight from a pack & then arranged on the board.

If you would like a charcuterie experience with a better selection of cheeses & meats with very well written descriptions then I would thoroughly recommend Porters in...

We've been before and enjoyed everything about it. Great wine, platter for this etc. No major problems, except, we were running short of bread to complete our platter experience. Waitress sauntered up and asked "can I get you anything else?" I asked for two more small rounds of French stick, Oh you want another basket of bread (No, just two slices) Well, you're gonna have to buy another bread bowl !!!!!! I asked for about 10p worth of extra bread ..... Shocking service, shocking business acumen, shocking customer service and attention to detail. Overall bills £70+ Owner needs a kick up the backside or train staff in the balance of customer service and cleverness of good business. Too many businesses are closing ,many because of greed or the inability to recognise what are genuine...