The Durant Arms — Restaurant in South Hams

Visited for Saturday dinner off the back of Reading good reviews. Unfortunately we had a terrible experience here. For starters we had the mussels and hallumi fries. The mussels were fine, albeit rather bland but the hallumi fries were absolutely awful. Like tepid strips of flavourless leather. For the mains my girlfriend had the Hake, which was perfectly nice. I had the burger and dirty fries, both of these were awful. Burger was cooked to death and the accompanying fries were stone cold. The dirty fries looked as if they'd be good but as soon as you tried them you realised the chef has no sense of taste. They were completely flavourless. The pulled pork was as dry as you could make it and the only taste that came through were from the jalapeño peppers thrown over the top. I didn't eat my dinner and explained that I wasn't at all happy with it. They refused to take them off the bill and instead insisted they take my pint off the bill. I had no issue with the pint. Apart from the fact I had been told on arrival that the beer I requested required a barrel change and line clean so would be a while. So I got something I didn't really want to tide me over, only to be told 15 minutes later they weren't going to bother changing the barrel at all, so I did end up buying a pint I didn't really want. Regardless of that, the issue was with the cremated burger and bowl of flavourless grease. After some two and throwing between waiter and manger it became clear they simply refused to take the offending items from the bill so to save a scene I paid and left hungry and extremely disappointed. I will never return and urge others to take heed of this review and head elsewhere. There's a much nicer pub a 2 minute drive from there down by the river for instance. I will be pursuing a claim through my bank for goods not received in order to...

This pub seems to be the heart of the pretty village of Ashprington, in which it sits. As a pub and restaurant it excels. The staff are very friendly and welcoming, the atmosphere is warm and the other customers were engaging and chatty. Oh yes, and the food. My wife and I stayed there for three days so we sampled a good selection of the menu between us and everything we had was well presented and utterly delicious. However, special mention has to go to the burger. The thing about burgers is that everyone makes them. If there's one dish you'll find on every menu, it'll be a burger. But some restaurants try to do them properly and the Durant Arms really does them so very properly. I'm not one prone to photographing my food but I was so impressed I took a quick snap. I've uploaded it to their Google+ page. It was simply the best burger I can remember.

So why only four stars? Well, we stayed three nights and the accommodation was pretty good generally but the bed let it down. It was horrible. It was too small for two tall adults, the mattress was cheap and nasty and felt like it was covered in in thick plastic (have they had a problem with bed wetters?) and the bed rattled and wobbled around. We struggled to get even half a decent night's sleep. In fact on the last morning we were awake so early that we left by about 06:00, drove the three and a half hours home and went to bed.

Oh and they need to sort the WiFi out. If you're going to offer WiFi (and, these days, you really need to) then it has to work properly throughout your establishment. If you have thick stone walls then put a hotspot in every room. It's not expensive and it avoids the frustration of trying to get on-line to keep your business ticking over while...

We visited recently with friends, and we were looking forward to an enjoyable Sunday Lunch. We all ordered the 28 day aged slow cooked Roast Beef and were anticipating a succulent meal. To our amazement, we found that the meat was chewy and tough. My wife discreetly raised the issue with a staff member who said he would speak to the kitchen. He returned several minutes later, saying they could substitute the beef for another meat from the menu. My wife chose chicken, and I had roast belly pork, which also turned out to be very chewy. At no time did we receive an apology or any expression of regret. When we paid for the meal, we were charged full price, and the issue wasn't mentioned at all. ||The most disappointing aspect was the poor customer service. An obvious problem was barely acknowledged, and the bare minimum was done to resolve the problem. Eating out is not inexpensive, and our experience was spoiled as much by the attitude of the staff as the tough meat we were served. We live locally and...