White Tails Restaurant — Restaurant in New Forest

My husband and I ate at White Tails as we were staying at the hotel, and other restaurants in the area were booked out on the Saturday we were staying. We had a very disappointing experience - I'm really confused as to how this has ended up one of the top-rated restaurants in Brockenhurst.

As other reviewers have mentioned, the decor isn't great, but I don't think this is the restaurant owners' fault; I imagine decisions over the interior come from the hotel.

The food, however, should be entirely their responsibility. We each had the goat's cheese as a starter, then the mushroom stroganoff and the vegetable cakes as our mains. The goat's cheese was fine - but it was cooked only on top, still almost fridge-cold in the middle, and it was on a bed of entirely undressed rocket.

My vegetable cakes were actively bad. They were largely cakes of mashed potato with an eclectic mix of possibly-frozen vegetables scattered throughout. They were flavourless and quite dry - the chilli sauce they were served with wasn't nearly enough to deal with the dryness. Again, they were served with a large side salad that was entirely undressed (why? A simple olive oil and vinegar dressing wouldn't have been hard).

My husband had the wild mushroom stroganoff; this was reasonably nice, although we weren't sure how wild the mushrooms were. The rice wasn't prepared well; it was clumpy.

Both the stroganoff and the vegetable cakes were served with parsnip crisps - these were okay, but not an obvious choice for either meal.

For desserts, I had the roulade - perfectly pleasant - and my husband had the creme brulée. The brulée was not served hot, and the custard was splitting a little in parts.

I wonder if some of the issues with this restaurant come from a lack of thought and understanding regarding vegetarian options. We overheard Ramsay talking to another pair of vegetarian diners and describing the prawn linguine and salmon cannelloni as vegetarian - I think very few vegetarians would concur.

The quality of the food was especially bad considering the price point; we paid about £75 overall (and didn't drink wine or anything alcoholic). £15 for my vegetable cakes felt especially egregious.

It's also odd that in a hotel that generally prides itself on local produce, the food here doesn't seem local in origin. We heard another couple here enquiring about local ciders, which White Tails doesn't serve. The cheese board also seems to have nothing local, in contrast to The Pig hotel restaurant which serves some lovely local cheeses.

I will say that Ramsay's service was very pleasant, and he was very friendly and welcoming. However, I would not...

We arrived for our meal on a Saturday eve, but were greeted with ‘you do not have a reservation, all my customers are here.’ Showed the gentleman our confirmation of the booking and it was then acknowledged that he had made a mistake to process it, but there was no actual apology at that time. We were then informed that they have no space for us but we could sit in an unprepared side room (on our own). Caught off guard we went in and sat down. We were then left alone for a fair few minutes, wondering what to do. The gentleman reappeared with menus and a wine list, plonked them down and quickly said he had to deal with the people already seated and still did not apologise about his massive mistake. There was no ‘I’m very sorry please let me get you a drink’ or ‘ I will be with you in a moment to see what we can sort out.’ Sitting there absolutely furious as to what was happening, we decided to leave. I text to say how let down we felt, with his reply being- “since I had people who were booked before you and arrived at the same time as you, I had to serve them first, apologies for my mistake”. This was the only apology! At eight o’clock at night, it left us unable to go anywhere for what was intended to be a special occasion dinner.

Really not good...

Really beautiful food. We had the scotch egg, the stroganoff (with beef), and the creme brulee and lemon roulade. Everything was super fresh and skilfully cooked, the portions exactly right. We also loved the atmosphere - from decor to music, and the host was very friendly and gave us recommendations. We felt very safe with regards to covid measures, and cannot wait to return and taste more of the menu!

Edit: visited again yesterday to try both favourites and new (to us) dishes. Had the scotch egg and stroganoff again, as well as the pork loin main and goat's cheese starter. We also tried the cheesecake and bakewell tart. Eveything was simply exquisite, and Ramsey is always an excellent host. We hope to...