The Little Brown Jug — Restaurant in Sevenoaks

Where do I start… We drove just under an hour to get to this pub after being recommended by a friend who visited last year. All I can say is what a waste of a journey & massive disappointment this venue was! We booked a table for 2pm on a sunny Sunday. Upon arrival, we were left standing at the front with our children for around 5 minutes with the bar staff just continuing to serve customers and looking up at us here and there. Not a smile, not a hello, nothing along the lines of, someone will be with you shortly to show you your table… nothing!

Once we were seated, the guy politely explained that they were incredibly busy so they’ve had to close the kitchen for half an hour to deal with the orders that they had already taken and that we could place our order once they reopened the kitchen. We didn’t see a problem with that as we thought the time would soon pass once we ordered drinks, sorted the children and let them have a little play in the children’s area. 40 minutes later, they were still not taking any food orders and then finally at 14:50, they allowed for us to place our order.

We ordered 2 x roast dinners with one of them being the ‘big mix roast’ and the other roast chicken. I ordered my daughter sausage and chips and knowing that she’s a fussy eater and probably wouldn’t eat many chips, I ordered an extra sausage for her. Before I paid I double checked the extra sausage was on the computer and the guy behind the till confirmed it was. We waited an another 1 HOUR and 5 minutes for our food to finally arrive at our table at 16:05 (over 2 hours since we arrived). Every single plate of food was cold but by this point we were all starving and exasperated with the level of service from this pub that we decided not to send the food back. I did however call the waitress back over as we were missing my daughter’s extra sausage to which she replied she would ‘go and check with the chef’. I saw the waitress going backwards and forwards serving food but she didn’t not return to us. 20 minutes later, I approached the waitress to ask what was happening with my daughter’s sausage as she had finished and was waiting for it to which the waitress replied “I’ve told the chef so hopefully he will cook you one”. Hopefully… lol!!! Imagine being told that something you ordered and paid for will hopefully turn up. Shocking!!! Anyway, by 4:30pm the sausage was still in hiding so I approached a lady who looked like management who said she’ll refund me for the non existent extra sausage. Luckily I promised my daughter a McDonald’s on the way home to make up for her cold, sparse meal. Moving on to our roast… cold but tasty minus the little tray of cold vegetables TO SHARE!!! Considering my partner ordered the big mix roast, you’d think he’d get a reasonable portion of vegetables to match. I had to go and check the bowl of vegetables were to share to which we were told that is was a sharing sized portion so we both enjoyed a SPOONFUL of mashed swede, greens, cauliflower and red cabbage each. We decided to skip desert after our dinner plates were left stacked on the edge of our table where we put them to be collected for a good 20 minutes after we finished eating. The wasps had a great time eating the food that was left on our plates. The plates were finally taken as we left. Overall, great places for little ones to play, hence the one star but the service is shockingly dreadful and the food was a total disappointment after a 2 hour wait. I would not recommend this place to anyone. It takes a lot for me to write a negative review but my experience yesterday was simply exhausting especially after spending over £110 for such a bad experience!!! The staff running this pub clearly have no idea what they are doing.

Edit: I emailed the chain to make them aware of the negative experience I received yesterday and this was their shocking reply… so, so rude & patronising with a touch of blackmail. How very...

A victim of its past success. I've been going to TLBJ for many years. It was great when our children were little as it has an excellent garden and is child and dog friendly. At that time the food was solid, dependable, tasty country pub fayre.

Unfortunately I cannot recommend TLBJ at the moment. We went as a family on Bank holiday Monday arriving at 1.15pm and I was astonished at how much the place had grown in size. The menu was underwhelming but acceptable and whilst we're not fussy eaters there was nothing my daughter wanted for a starter, which was very unusual. My wife and son had the fried seafood bowl and I the mussels. The mussels were overcooked. We received our starters 50mins after ordering. I noted the table opposite us was upset that we received our starters before they received their mains. At 3.50pm I went over to speak with the staff to ask where our food was? They apologised and said it was on its way. Our Mains that took nearly three hours to arrive was, roast beef, two Mac N Cheese and a Handmade Gourmet Burger. The gourmet burger was just awful and couldn't have been handmade as it was so poor. It consisted of two thin patties of meat drizzled with blue cheese and some burger salad, it reminded my daughter of her primary school burgers. I couldn't eat it and my daughter had half of it. I ate the bun and salad as well as some of the Mac N Cheese. The battered onion rings were over cooked too. The staff were very polite and took our starters and our soft drinks off the bill. We left at 4.30pm. Our bank holiday afternoon was over, wasting 3 hours and 15 minutes of it. I can say that for less than £10 I could've eaten a burger and fries with a drink at a known large no frills pub chain and it would've been so much better.

I have no idea what has happened to TLBJ but it certainly isn't a gourmet pub. At best it's a cooking by numbers establishment, favouring fried and battered food served in mounds rather than delicate plates of delicious food that other better local pubs can serve. The service is slow. The staff are polite but overwhelmed that the kitchen is unable to meet the demand. The TLBJ has expanded its cover size to make more money but quite clearly hasn't spent the money on its kitchen size or expanding its kitchen staff. Not sure if I will go again, unless it's a midweek drop in to see if the food is any better than a pressurised bank holiday weekend. I want it to be good and I will update this...

I hate to leave a bad review but we had a very poor experience overall yesterday.

We arrived at quater to 2 and it was not overly busy. Staff were attentive when we first came in and we were immediately sat down and asked twice for drinks/food orders - all seemed well at first.

We ordered 2 sandwiches and 2 pints of Diet Coke- after waiting 40 minutes our food came out. One of which was fine- although we had to ask the same member of staff twice for sauces and still waited the best part of 10 minutes to get any.

The other sandwich was just not as described on the menu- ham, lettuce and whole grain mustard mayo came with spinach/rocket and lathered in American mustard. Of course I don’t mind about the lettuce but American mustard is completely different to a whole grain mustard mayo! The side salad was also- quite literally- swimming in oil on both plates.

Nobody came to check on us to see if the food was okay, when we asked for the bill from one of the waiters and he didn’t even question why one plate was untouched- the bill never actually came and we ended up paying at the bar ourselves.

Eventually I caught the manager after he had gone to speak to a separate table and I explained that the situation and while he was incredibly apologetic, it was too late. We’d been here over an hour and I didn’t have time to wait another 40 minutes for another sandwich and crisps. He kindly took this off our bill which I was appreciative of but It was still a disappointing experience when the pub looks so lovely!

When we then went to the bar to pay for what we did have, it still came to £20.85 for 1 sandwich and two pints of coke (no service charge was added) which is incredibly expensive.

We noticed two other tables around us were also having issues, one group had been there 2 hours and were still missing 3 of their mains and another table had issues with missing drinks and had sent something back to the kitchen

Prior to seeing the bill we said we might come back here for drinks as the pub really is beautiful and we frequently do walks around the area but following seeing the drinks prices, I don’t think...