The Rising Sun — Restaurant in New Forest

Shocked and appalled

Went for lunch with family and friend.

Some of the most shocking and rude customer service. I've ever experienced.

We were getting beers and some food which at The Rising Sun requires the customer to use two tills instead of one.

We provided the server with the table number, placed our orders. Unfortunately for me I asked if we could pay once instead of twice. This is where everything quickly unravelled for the hapless member of staff.

He successfully transferred the drinks tab over to one but then only charged me for the food. No bother I said, I can pay the difference. He got very aggressive and rude due to his own mistake on the till. I asked to speak to the manager as he was getting so riled up his hands were shaking.

To my disbelief, the hapless member of staff said he was the owner!!

Then, to add to that, my friend tried to order some lemonade for our kids and was told he couldn't add it to the existing bill. Which of course with was fine by me. My friend motioned to me and said that I was paying for the drinks and started to walk over to me to see what was going on..

Then a different member of staff became alarmed and aggressive towards my friend insisting on payment. Its like they were worried we were going to run off with two lemonades!! This after spending 60 quid on food!

The hapless owner disappeared and came back and I said to him that he's making a very simple transaction extremely difficult. He yelled back that it was I that was making the transaction difficult. He then said ^you're no different than anyone else^ I had to stop listening as the situation was really getting out of hand and I could see the red mist on the horizon.. The owner was now worried that I was going to walk off without paying for my kids drinks! It was unbelievable.

I took my payment card out of my wallet and placed it on the counter in front of him. (there was a large post that I had to walk around to get from the Food till to the Drinks till. The owner then handed it back to me and I was allowed to pay for my drinks.

I could see he was still shaking so I suggested that after they cleared the two or three customers behind me that I would come back and speak to him.

Food arrived..

Steak n ale pie - very average, small, very little meat mash dropped on the plate with an ice cream scoop. (classy) roasted veg was very basic.

Kids had chicken burgers which were less than MC Donalds quality at nearly twice the price

Beer was fine Including the ale.

As you can imagine, I won't be back.. I hope the owner invests in customer service training for him and his staff.

Perhaps it was the full moon but there's no need to give the place...

Came here with a friend tonight and we were shocked by how outrageously expensive all the food was! We figured perhaps it's justified by big portions. No. The Indian Salad with halloumi came in a TINY cereal bowl that was difficult to eat out of. At first, I thought it was just a side salad bowl to go with my friend's pork chop main, but it wasn't! £17.50 for a miniscule bowl of quinoa and a brick of halloumi that was very difficult to cut up in such a tiny bowl. My friend's "pork chops" came with just one tiny pork chop and half of it was fat that needed to be cut off anyway.

We had to wait 45 for our two tiny main courses to come out. The table beside us (2 people) were waiting well over an hour for theirs, and they were complaining. We listened to the manager who had to come out and was trying to apologise.

While the waiting staff were friendly, they didn't take away the extra glasses when we ordered our drinks so we had no space at all on our tiny table, and it was a 30 minute wait for the table to be cleared after our mains - staff were avoiding our corner, not even looking over at us. Eventually we had to collar a waitress who was taking an order from the table next to us. The wait staff seemed stressed and flustered, so I wonder if they were understaffed, or if there were other issues going on behind the scenes.

We ordered desserts because we were still hungry after our tiny mains. The one I wanted was out - the staff didn't seem to know what was on or off the menu because there was some sort of "miscommunication" going on between the kitchen, wait staff and manager. The cookie sandwich was disappointing - two very hard tiny cookies squishing a scoop of ice cream, with a spoon to eat it. Well it was very difficult to cut it up with a spoon to eat, as the cookie was so hard. Would have been better if they used a soft style cookie for this type of dessert, and bigger! I had the sticky toffee pudding which was OK.

Sadly, we will not be returning after this experience. While the refurb looks nice, it's simply far too overpriced, and the wait times were awful. The place seems poorly managed. Very disappointing, because this was my favourite family...

Absolutely awful!

Just popped in for lunch for 2 of us. Ordered the lamb shank and a light option scampi. Shown yo a table and ordered drinks, all good so far. Drinks arrived and then asked to order food.

50 minutes later, yup I did say 50 minutes! , food arrived... the wait was when it went downhill fast. The lamb shank was grey and looked to be microwaved, the veg was a funny colour, grey cabbage, same as the carrots and zero seasoning! Had to ask 3 times for mint sauce!

The scampi came out anaemic, chips still frozen in places and grey peas whi h were not even tepid! The whole lot was stone cold and inedible!

No table check backs and couldn't flag down any waiting on staff, who seemed to have all had a bad day as not one smile to be seen anywhere!

Vacated the table to go to the till, having left everything except half the lamb shank and some veg, to be greeted by a frosty member of staff. Said what the issue was with the food, to be snottily told " should have said, I know you waited for ages" but (basically) never mind, you've got to go back to work now so pointless raising the complaint now!!" Said in a roundabout way but obvious from the words that, that was exactly what was meant! The landlord (???) Was obviously leading his "merry" band of staff with his lack of smile, decent acknowledgement and total lack of interest in what we'd said! The fact rest all the food was left on the table, in its full regalia, we were just fobbed off and made to feel like we should never have said anything. We paid the bill, which was high priced for what it was and then left.

I will not be going back, will leave this review and be it in the hope that they learn some customer services and possibly how to probe a dish, for temperature in order to not serve up cold food again I will not recommend recommend this place to anyone. Had better from Macdonalds drive thru!

Sorry but I have to tell tou the truth in the hope they...