Kings Head — Restaurant in North Norfolk

Have been to Cromer many times over the years and on this occasion, I had the unfortunate experience of going to The King’s Head pub for a meal. The pandemic has been brutal to the hospitality industry and I sympathise immensely with people trying to keep their businesses going in these uncertain and hard times. But I have to say, that my experience at the King’s Head was one of the worst dining experiences of my life. It was clear from the outset, that there was a staff shortage, it was busy and there were two members of staff serving all the tables. Our waitress was perfectly pleasant and was doing her best to manage a number of covers. I should add that we had arrived for about 6pm with two children in tow, one a 4-month-old, the other a 4-year-old. My parents in law had ordered my daughter’s food before we arrived. The menu reads tomato soup with bread – we get Heinz tomato soup, disappointing and it was would have helpful to have specified that the soup was from a can, as I would have ordered her something else. We placed our order and I should add, that we were made to pay for the whole meal before the food had arrived, a bit unusual but perhaps this was a warning sign of things to come. We waited. And waited, and, you guessed it, waited. Eventually, my mother-in-law asked, who we subsequently found out was the landlord, about the food and it was clear from the outset that the landlord had a chip on his shoulder (no pun intended). Immediately defensive, came back a few minutes later waving a piece of paper saying that we had only ordered the food at 6.50 and it was now 7.15 and that’s that, not listening to us say that it was much earlier but our waitress had taken the order down on paper and may have processed it later. He spoke over my mother-in-law on a number of occasions and when I asked if there was anything he could possibly do to speed out order up, I got a very curt and dismissive response of ‘well I can't make them cook the food faster, it's cooked when it's cooked’. I challenged him on his attitude as he was extremely rude, discourteous and confrontational. It seemed to me that he was angry, angry that any woman had been assertive enough to challenged his horrendous attitude and I do wonder whether there was a racial element involved in his disgusting behaviour, how dare a young Asian woman try and complain, we are in Victorian era Britain after all! He returned a short while later, clearly still angry and continued to challenge us, he then said that he has been planning to offer us a discount before I interrupted him in previous exchange, when I asked him when he was planning to do that, he became extremely defensive and decided that he would refund us and we would leave. This was after we had spent over 2 hours waiting to be served, with two small children. I am truly astounded at this level of service and actually, complete lack of understanding or compassion. It is a real shame, because with attitude and behaviour like that, I really don’t think he will last long, especially when other places have lovely staff who are willing to have a conversation with their patrons and not argue with them because they dared to show some assertion over the quality of service. I should add that I can't stand unnecessarily rude customers, customers who complain and are rude to staff for absolutely no reason, it's a classist behaviour which I find deplorable, but the behaviour of the landlord at this restaurant was utterly deplorable. Cromer is full of lovely places and you don’t need to waste your time on this place. Avoid, avoid, avoid. And then...

Wow, that was bad. Please don't eat here, it was honestly one of the worst meals I've had. I ordered at the bar and told the lady I was gluten free. As they were out of Hunter's chicken, the only option was the roast. The lady behind the bar was lovely and made a note of being gf and not wanting the Yorkshire's/sausages etc. I asked if I could have extra veg and potatoes instead (this did not happen). We were a table of three adults and three children and we ended up waiting one hour for our food. The food side of things was very quiet and we only saw a couple of plates go out in this time. After about 45 minutes into the wait, the server came over and said to me that the roast pork "looked awful" and would I like the beef or chicken instead. I said the beef. When it finally arrived, it came complete with Yorkshire pudding on top. I asked for this to be taken off because of the allergy (I'd also asked for gravy on the side, which also didn't happen). It seems they don't take care when it comes to allergens! But the worst was the beef, it was entirely raw (I don't mind things rare but this looked like it hadn't even been warmed up and in fact it was so cold it was like it had come out of the fridge! I tried some and it was so chewy, really unpleasant. I ate the very tragic veg and tiny trio of roast potatoes (with young children it's hard to make a fuss when they'd already been sitting at the table for over an hour at this point.) no one came to ask how the food was. In addition, the portion size of the linguine was tiny, the children's beans looked mashed to a pulp and the general standard was very poor. Once the children had finished my sister and brother in law took them off so I could speak to someone without them having to wait any longer. I spoke to the lady at the bar again who seemed rather stressed. It definitely seemed like it wasn't their first complaint of the day. After explaining, I went and sat back at the table to wait for the manager. In the meantime, the table next to ours had the same issue with the unpleasant roast dinner and also wanted to speak to the manager. The manager appeared but kept avoiding both tables, scooting past, it was very unprofessional. Eventually he came over after about another 10/15 minutes. I explained the situation again and was told because I'd eaten more than 50% of the meal he couldn't do anything. In the end, he was very rude though did refund the three adult meals. It was rather upsetting and it made me feel as though I had done something wrong for raising the issues as he was very defensive. All in all, the food was dreadful, the management was awful and it just made us all feel pretty rubbish afterwards. I'm sure there are much nicer places in Cromer to go to instead....

We visited the Kings Head a few weeks ago, and having eaten there before we were excited to come back! Unfortunately, we were extremely disappointed. We had 5 meals ordered, chicken burger, 2x stilton burgers, mixed grill and a kids meal. When my chicken burger and sweet potato fries were brought to the table I was shocked. One piece of dried children, with 2 very small wilted bits of lettuce, and a sauce less bun. The stilton burgers, with a couple of mushroom shoved in the bun, was very UNDER whelming, and a small, VERY small, portion of fries on the plate. The mixed grill was even worse, the sausage had mash potato on one side, this dish doesn't even come with mash!!! The dish was advertised with peas on the side, it came with 'one' single pea. We were very upset, so we asked our server who said, 'it's ok, we've had loads of complaints today' He seemed to be on our side, and understood our reasons for being un happy. But when he took the dishes back to the kitchen, he returned and said the chef had asked what was wrong with them! I suppose paying nearly £14 for a burger you expect more, especially as times are so hard now, and going out for a meal is a very rare treat. The duty manager then came to the table, he was very defensive, and explained that the times we've eaten there before was an ex employee. He was an Ex employee because they realised he was going over and above for customers, serving good quality food and making customers happy...but because of this they were as a company loosing money because he wasn't sticking to portion sizes, and that was his argument. We agreed to a refund on the whole food order, but advising him of mash on a sausage which has quite clearly been taken from another plate of food, I would have gotten more empathy from my toddler! I WILL not go back there again, there are many other business' that deserve my hard earned cash, especially as a representative from that pub cannot even be bothered to shed a glimpse of understanding....