Vine Inn — Restaurant in New Forest

Worst family pub I have ever been to - avoid at all costs.

The Evening Meal: We reserved our table in advanced online, however when we arrived my friend was told that they actually do not use the online booking system and just cobbled us together some tables, once they cleared away other people's uneaten food. The table was not cleaned for us and we wiped it as best we could with baby wipes, but the childrens clothes still got covered in some unknown sticky substance. The menu looked reasonable, decent prices and has plenty of choice, as long as you like a side of chips with it! However, with only 2 bar staff and 1 waitress the service is exceptionally slow. You need to order food at the bar, on a Sunday evening this involves a queue of 20 minutes, great when you have hungry tired mouths to feed! So what can the children do in the mean time, play on the play area outside? No because this is out of use for 'health & safety' reasons, it looked fine to me but a wall of picnic benches, water damaged signs and patchy tape said otherwise, still my child still managed to walk through this maze to reach the said dangerous play area. But I am getting side tracked here, I am still in the queue to order food, the person ahead of me asked for allergen information, the bar staff bring out a massive yellow folder to look up the customers request, but it was accompanied with the comment of, 'well, I can look it up, but I can't advise you on allergen information because if I read it wrong I could be sued'. Well why have an information folder to start with?!? I ordered a glass of wine for the better half, after a short discussion with the bar staff about them not knowing white wine types I managed to order a 'large white', this came in a champagne glass, becuase they had run out of wine glasses at 5.30pm, as the bar staff told me they had all been stolen. Food ordered, after a short wait it all came to the table, along with an extra portion of unordered chips, because when every meal has chips we need more! I had the curry, the portions of rice, chips, naan, poppadoms & onion bhajis were great, except there was no mango dip to accompany the meal and the portions of chicken tikka was just enough to moisten the rice, let alone help the rest of the carbs slide down, the chicken wasn't the best, needless to say most of my meal was uneaten, as were the rest in my party and looking around most other customers. We did not even risk dessert.

The Bar: Later once the children were settle some of us who were not on child watch duties managed to escape to the bar a few hours later. We noticed that there were dirty dishes on the table where we had been, my mate made a comment that table had been reused, I noticed it was still our dirty dishes. As I looked round every table had dirty dishes, the staff simply left them out and it was clear they were not going to clear it away until they had shut up shop. Anyhow, we found a seat and ordered some drinks. Later we went back for some more, I ordered a Whisky & Cola, good to see the bar staff are trained enough to provide me with a Southern Comfort instead of a Whiskey, but at least she asked as she was not certain. We left the bar towards the end of the evening to let the staff have some space to do the long awaited clearing up.

Breakfast: A small positive is that it is self service all you can eat, both full English and continental. This was wholly ruined by the quality of the coffee, by far the worse warm brown substance I had encountered in a while, after one swig it was left to create it's own ecosystem. For a tenner and attached to a Premier Inn I expected better, others around the country are of a far better quality and I have eaten at a fair few. But never fear, the excited children can burn off some energy in the outdoor play area... oh wait, they can't.

Thank you if you read all this, I hope you are now suitably informed to find decent...

We stopped in here for some lunch after going to wacky wearhouse. Well we're do I start we arrived and was shown to a table full of the previous persons plates glasses colouring and food. The two tables behind us was also like this. The waitress cleared the table of the plates and glasses and didn't come back we asked another member of staff if they could wipe the table over as it was sticky and had beans and mash on the table. We ordered food at the bar the bar staff was polite and upsold drinks as they was on offer down side is the glasses was dirty. We went back to the table and waited for the food the starters arrived they was hot after about 4 minutes the mains started to arrive I had the chicken combo meal the cheeseburger was so over cooked it was dry and had no flavour the chips had been re cooked as they was hard. We asked for some tea spoons for the children's beans the waitress went off to get some when she came back she said they didn't have any they had little forks good job we didn't order hot drinks as we would have to use little forks to stir it. When she came back she said that a delivery had just come in and it had tea spoons on it well I would return them to the supplier they was scratched and marked and not very clean. After we finnished our mains no one came over to clear our plates so we put them on top of the table behind us plates that was still sitting there from when we arrived. We went to the bar to order dessert as the main was awful I ordered candy mania. We asked if our desserts could come at the same time as the other ones that was ordered they said that was fine. The children ordered build your own not quite sure why it is called that when it is all slopped in a bowl together when we have had before at a hungry horse it all comes in little dishes and the children make it there self. We ordered the candy mania to share well we're do I start with that I was filled up with melted ice cream and then warn squirty cream I spoke to another waitress and she said she would change it. Another member of our party ordered apple crumble the custard was stone cold and the presentation was unbelievable the custard was so full u couldn't see the apple crumble and it was all round the rim of the plate. I took it to the bar and spoke to lady she said she would get it changed. When it come back out in had just been put into a bigger bowl and re heated as the crumble was over cooked and once again the top rim had custard thumb print on it. The children wanted to use the toilet so I took them in there it was worse than using a public toilet there was toilet paper all over the floor only a tiny bit of toilet paper in the holder the sinks was dirty how are you ment to wash your hands when u have to use a dirty tap to do this. The restaurant area was full of bits of food all over the carpet and napkins and straws there was lots of the table full of plates and glasses but no one sitting there. The whole place could do with a good clean we did not see any management team around just waitresses.

We use hungry horse a lot and never had such a bad experience as we did...

Pretty poor, really. The positioning of this restaurant gives them a massive captive audience advantage - which they could use as a real opportunity for making this the place to be... unfortunately it's only really being used as a cash cow.

Staff, whilst trying their best, clearly don't want to be there - the advent of the 'app order ' process has only made this worse. Food and drinks and dumped and follow up checks are non-existent.

We have stayed in the Premier Inn next door and have had dinner for two nights running at the Vine Inn and have the following feedback:

Cutlery has been dirty on both occasions. This is both knives and forks and plates/mugs as they are delivered. No care and attention seemingly.

everything and I mean everything, appears sticky... tables, doors, floors, menus - all of it.

Food is extremely underwhelming and overpriced...

Our kids meals on the first day (pizza) were clearly small Chicago town pizzas (you know, the small ones that come in packs of 4 with the distinctive crust ridge) that had been microwaved.

They haven't had basic tomato pasta in stock for the last two days, so clearly this isn't being made fresh.

Sticky toffee pudding on day one can only be described as a microwaved sticky toffee sludge.

One adult meal on day one was lukewarm. No server came within 30 feet to check food so this couldn't be rectified easily.

Adults meals on day two were both lukewarm (after a 45 minute wait) and ironically the cooked tomato was burnt. Again, no server came within any reasonable distance to flag.

Kids sausage meals on day two were summarily rejected by the children, upon taste test you can understand why.. imagine the cheap sausages you can buy for the BBQ, but don't, because they taste like cardboard? Yep, they're those ones.

Over £100 spent over two meals and I genuinely suspect you'd get better quality at a McDonald's, for £40~.

Despite what the app says, guest ales are not available.

Toilets are appalling. I took my toddler into the men's and found one cubical out of order and the other with a broken (and very wet) seat. Clearly this hasn't been checked, despite the cleaning sheet saying otherwise. Used the disabled/baby changing toilet, which wasn't much better.

Outdoor play area needs some serious TLC.

As mentioned by another reviewer, the outdoor pavements/concrete/parking needs resurfacing or at...