The Ox Row Inn, Salisbury — Restaurant in Salisbury

Lovely old pub in excellent location with friendly, helpful staff, but oh my, the food was awful.

I've been here a few times for lunch and enjoyed it, so we booked for a 7.15pm dinner.

We were presented with the menus, but then immediately given a list of 3 main meals and one side that weren't available - early on a gloomy Friday evening 🤷. Nothing fancy, just pork chops, gnocchi, and their "signature dish" of sea bass. (The missing side was onion rings). Later there were two puddings unavailable too, again nothing fresh or fancy - just lemon tart and a crumble.

I had haddock and chips. The haddock didn't taste like haddock, and was massively overcooked and dry. The accompanying portion of minted peas was tiny, and the peas were like bullets, with very roughly chopped mint chucked over them. (I like my veggies al dente, but not as hard as gravel). The tartare sauce appeared to be mayonnaise with some unidentifiable and tasteless green bits added. The chips were good, with crunchy outsides, and soft insides.

My partner had the burger. It was dry, had none of the "secret sauce", and was topped with rubbery cheese, (which had the texture of paneer).

So really very bad food.

As I said at the beginning, it's a well located pub with a pleasant interior and good service. I would add that the beer is well kept, and the wines were above average for a pub. But Blimey! they really need to sort out...

Gutted, disappointing! Not from the area but had eaten here before and was lovely so booked in for Sunday lunch last minute. Staff were accommodating fitting us in within the hour however the food and service from then on was poor. Both mine and my friends meal was cold, to which we had to get up and speak to a member of staff about. They were taken away and returned after just being warmed up in the microwave. You would expect at the price you’re paying to have a fresh meal (we’d had two mouthfuls of the meal prior to this). After returning the meals to us, we were basically avoided by the waiter after that. Didn’t bother to return and check whether we were happy. The Sunday roast was also missing an item which it states on the menu. The chicken, lamb and Yorkshire puddings were tasty but the rest of the meal was very poor. Roast potatoes didn’t taste fresh and weren’t crispy- which is a crime for a roasty! Carrot and parsnip wasn’t roasted enough so just looked unappetising and wasn’t very tasty. We did speak with the manager and he was very apologetic and said that the food, drinks (2 x soft drinks) and any desserts we wanted were on the house- we politely declined the offer of dessert and left. Upon leaving we said thank you and goodbye to the waiter to which we got ignored! Hoping the feedback is taken onboard as it’s a lovely pub, ideal location, nice atmosphere but won’t be...

It's amazing to me how much a sign could make a difference when picking this place to eat. I'm not sure if the staff deliberately choose not to let potential customers know that they also serve food upstairs or if they just think everyone automatically knows that this is the case by mind power alone. Myself and two friends stopped here for dinner on an early Saturday evening a few weeks ago. After standing at the bottom of the stairs waiting by the sign for someone to ask if we wanted to eat, we decided to take a look upstairs ourselves where we discovered the area was practically empty and two staff members who were having a good old chat about their lives. After waiting for them to finish their chat, we asked if they were serving food and if we could take a seat. I feel the only reason this place wasn't busy upstairs is because of the unfriendly feeling people get from the front of house staff and the misunderstanding that there is also another floor where you can relax and order your food despite it being busy downstairs. The food is really good and well worth the money, I think with a little tweek here and there, this would be a great...