The Trout Inn — Restaurant in Oxford

I was really looking forward to going back to the Trout after about a 25 year absence (I moved to New Zealand some time ago). In fact, when I was last dining at the Trout, the wooden footbridge across the river was a ruin and didn't even reach the far bank, and they also employed the use of wooden spoons with painted numbers on placing food orders. Anyway, this was part of my visit back to the UK but was unfortunately left thoroughly underwhelmed. The place had changed a lot and not really for the better. It's had quite a face lift at some point which has robbed it of some of it's original charm and unique feel. The furnishings now feel very 'themed' and manufactured, and quite commercial to be honest. The service was below par considering the prices and not the professional level of staffing you should expect, it fell a long way short of how the place apparently aspired to present itself. I was rather aghast with what was presented to me in the way of food. I ordered the 'Dirty Burger' from the menu (£18.50), wow, extremely underwhelming and overpriced!! Barely any bacon to speak of, an 'OK' beef patty and far too much cheese, totally unbalanced flavour wise and small proportionally for the money!... oh, and a handful of chucky, but standard chips... blah! I'm sure they have other dishes better value than this but it was truly poor value for money and not particularly enjoyable. I really didn't want to dish the Trout but I just had to say something! Hope other visitors have better...

The setting is beautiful and our party of 8 was on a great table, we were meeting up from Norwich, Somerset and Cheltenham for Fathers Day. Our waitress was polite and did her very best but there were a few issues: The Fathers Day set menu which had been advertised well in advance was missing some dishes. These were the beetroot and goats cheese starter, the sea bass main course and the poached pair dessert. For a set menu which presumably is well planned in advance this is unacceptable especially as our table was booked for midday so there was no way they could have run out at that stage . We were only informed about the unavailable starter and main as we ordered. We were only informed that the poached pear was not available as the other desserts came out, so two of our party shared one dessert in the end. The food was incredibly slow to come out.. The main issue was with the desserts which arrived an hour after we ordered them. We asked twice if they were coming and were reassured both times that they were being prepared right then. We were actually in the process of cancelling them when they did arrive. It was 3.30 by the time we left, having sat down at midday.

In the positive side, the desserts were taken off the bill for us with no problem and we appreciated the management dealing with that quickly and without any quibbles. The set menu was good value and the food was nice but it might have been good to have a 2 course...

We’ve been coming to The Trout for many, many years and like everyone, we love the food, location, the walks and the countryside. We booked a meal as we were heading to Blenheim Palace for the Christmas Lights Show. On arrival our table wasn’t ready (well it was unoccupied but still had the plates, glasses etc from the previous customers). We were directed to the bar for a drink, and waited for around 15 mins to be seated. We were given our menus and selected our food. Having finished our starters, our main course arrived before our plates were cleared. It was at this point I noticed there was one server (the restaurant area down towards the toilets) who was taking orders, serving and clearing tables and was doing a wonderful job. I did begin to notice that other tables were taking ages to be cleared (not in our section), and one table in particular by the bar had a quantity of plates and glasses left for the entire duration of our meal. They were only cleared just as we were paying our bill. Please can you have staff clear the tables within an acceptable amount of time. It doesn’t look nice especially for people coming into the restaurant. I think it would be a good idea to have more staff directed to clear tables when there is the need (rather than leaving it to one server)…. Aside from that, we...