Ship Inn Lymington — Restaurant in New Forest

The table/waitress service was extremely slow, even though on arrival we were the only people in the restaurant and the slow service continued throughout our meal. We went up to order our drinks from the bar as the waitress had not come over after ten minutes of us having sat down. It took over 30 minutes to bring our starters out and then over another 30 minutes to bring out our mains! The main courses of our food were dreadful; I had the Plaice which was dry and overcooked and was so tiny I thought it was a Dab! I had a few boiled potatoes and there were no other vegetables! Also there was supposed to be parsley butter, which I had to remind the waitress about and she then brought some over. The waitress only came to check that everything was ok with our meals when we had nearly finished eating! I told her that I was not happy with the Plaice and after some discussion I agreed to have a piece of battered cod. This was brought out reasonably quickly and was better than the Plaice although it was quite greasy with hot oil and there was not a huge amount of fish. My partner had the meat pie which had very little meat in it and was quite poor for the price although seemingly better than my fish dishes! We just wanted to pay the bill and leave, I had a voucher for buy one course and get one free for my birthday. We got the discount but overall our food had been dreadful and the whole meal and experience was extremely disappointing. Our waitress offered us a free dessert, but we just wanted to leave so she gave me a chocolate brownie to take away. The whole meal was very disappointing, we had gone out to celebrate a special occasion and we wished that we had eaten elsewhere. In fact we then went to " The Ferryman" pub, Lymington and had a very nice pudding, coffee & drink there, which went someway to making up for our dreadful experience at The Ship Inn. We will not eat again at The Ship Inn, in future we will go to "The Ferryman" to have a...

I never usually write reviews but felt so let down with my recent visit to the Ship Inn that i had to write this.

The Ship Inn is located right by the Marina and is the perfect setting to relax, enjoy a drink and a tuck into a nice lunch. Unfortunately this was not the case.

We ordered from the main menu, everything seemed quite expensive given it is only a gastro pub but went ahead and ordered the chicken, bacon and avocado salad and Fish and Chips.

The Fish was battered in its skin, bit of a shame but probably the chefs preference. The main issue was the salad. The plate was literally all lettuce (iceberg) with a few rings of raw onion. There was no Avocado to be seen. The orange dressing was at the bottom of the dish, not on the salad. The bacon was greasy, fatty and cold. I was expecting hot crispy bacon. The chicken pieces were dry, cold and looked like something out of a packet. I complained and asked for a full refund (£16.25). Rather than paying the refund the lady charged me again. Luckily, I noticed this just before leaving and queried this. I was asked to come back after 3pm which I thought was unacceptable as i had to leave to catch a ferry. Had to ask several times for my money back and refused to leave. Eventually got £16.25 in cash and £16.25 refunded back to my card but it all took so long and the whole experience was just terrible. I'm not sure I would ever go back and I don't think I'm that fussy with food but in 40 years of eating out and never complaining, this was probably the most expensive, least appetising salad I have ever had (and ive had hundreds of...

Poor service, poor food. We went here on 14.9.23. Not impressed at all! There were 4 front of house staff, 3 of which (young males) obviously had no training in hospitality. I was waiting at the bar to order for 5 minutes and they were just chatting (1 was making a drink). I was not even acknowledged, even though I was standing right in front of them. Finally, a female staff member came over to me and took my food and drink order (I had to pay upfront as they were not doing table service). I ordered the sea bass fillet and my partner had the burger. Well, we were not impressed! The burger, for £18.50 was awful - small, dry and hardly any fries. The seabass - the fish itself was ok but I had literally 2-3 new potatoes, chopped up, 2 tiny pieces of red pepper and a desert spoonful size of crushed up peas. It was as dry as anything and this cost £19.50. I would have complained at the time but the service and staff were so awful, I wouldn't trust them and I had already paid. I have since seen other photos people have posted of this dish and mine was nothing like that. Other places, such as the Kings Head, are by far so much better (unsurprisingly, the Kings Head is always booked up). Management need to ensure their staff are appropriately trained and that the food is better quality and consistent. We obviously will never return and would...