The Colney Fox — Restaurant in St Albans

Been a few years since I last had a Sunday lunch at the Conley Fox, "well not much has changed" I visited the the fox with my wife and mother for what I though would be a pleasurable Sunday lunch this turned out not to be the case!

The bar was very quite not many people inside or out, the restaurant it'self was only half full, the first thing I noticed was the lack of staff! considering it was a very sunny day, we waited 10 mins to be shown to our table this would be the norm if busy.

Now sitting down we embarked on ordering some refreshments this took 10 mins to arrive after ordering, moving on from this my wife and I decided on the traditional English roast beef lunch (Not much can go wrong here since we live in England) my mother opted for her favourite fish and chips. 15 mins later the meals turned up, I will talk about the roast beef first.

The roast beef meals looked appetizing enough, mine was luke warm my wife's was stone cold! we then called the waiter back and asked him if he could re-heat the cold meal, after a few mins in the microwave this came back piping hot.

Half of my plate was taken up by something that looked like a giant Yorkshire pudding to the left with a pile of green vegetables in the center(might be cabbage) with 3 slices beef underneath followed by 2 sliced carrots accompanied one sliced parsnip too the right.

Honestly the only part of this I would say was acceptable to eat was the carrots and parsnip. The green vegtable was stringy chewy stumps as for the beef this was tough and grizzly my wife's meal was just as bad.

My mother had the fish and chips, she ate everything but she was realy hungry.

When we managed to get a waiters attention we then ordered more refreshments these took 15 mins to arrive, feeling very fatigued now so I managed to catch the eye of the elusive waiter and asked for the bill " well blow me down this took 10 mins to travel 20ft to our table.

I left a tip as large as the effort put in by all the staff this was a very big ZERO.

I will think very hard about going back again in 2 years time if ever.

Avoid is the best advise I can give You.

The restaurant owner's need to seriously consider making improvents if they want to compete with the Bull pub...

Was late being shown to our table but we expected that being Father’s Day. Brought dirty, unwashed sticky glasses for our table water. Waitress took them away but never brought clean ones, so we ended using wine glasses. Starter came which was Ok, main courses arrived a LONG time and we had to ask for cutlery as that had been taken away with starter plates after and quite frankly my roast turkey dinner was the worst I’ve ever eaten. Two were served with a stuffing ball, mine wasn’t, the tiniest amount of gravy meant we were trying to plough through a very dry roast dinner which was further spoiled by roast potatoes which were clearly tinned potatoes or processed potatoes of some kind that had been roasted. Waited 45 minutes and nobody came to take away plates so we got up and asked for menus for dessert. Waitress was gone so long we took two from another table that had got up and left in disgust. By the time she came back we knew what we wanted. We had been there over two and a half hours by then so I explained that if we ordered our desserts they would have to arrive pretty soon as one of our party had to get back to South London. She took the order but came back a while later and said she was letting us know that she had no idea when we would be getting our desserts but there would be a long wait as everyone was ordering desserts! We decided to spend, by now, the best part of three hours and still not have your dessert was unacceptable by anyone’s standards and so we asked for the cost of them to be removed from our fixed Father’s Day Menu which they were. We then had to rush to a supermarket before they closed at 5pm to buy some ingredients to create a dessert for the two Father’s in our party. It was supposed to be a special treat for our Fathers but ended up being an embarrassing nightmare. Lesson learned and never again! It is not good enough to point out that “you are busy” because it’s Father’s Day. Everyone knows it’s Father’s Day so the correct amount of experienced staff should have been on shift making sure it ran smoothly. If that wasn’t an option then you should have taken less bookings. A special day, which could well be the last for my elderly Father, was...

Aesthetically charming. A very enjoyable environment to be in. Warm and cozy, providing a high class country pub feel.

Staff warm, welcoming and friendly to talk to.

Ordered a Madri and a Neck Oil at the bar, both live and very chilled, perfect temperature with great flavour. Clearly a good job done of line cleaning.

No table service when ordering food, not sure if just a lunchtime thing or not. In a venue like this I'd have expected table service, but in all honesty I liked the freedom of not having it.

Ordered the Sea Bass, Steak Brisket sandwich and the crispy chicken starter. Took 40mins to come despite only 1 other food order on the go. I didnt mind too much as i was having a leisurely day anyway but subsequent guests did mind and i dont blame them. With only 10 tables occupied and 4 small food orders on the go you can't be using "Sorry sir the kitchen is really busy" as an excuse.

Sea Bass was beautiful cooked along with the veg, bar one potato which was actually raw. I liked the addition of the king prawns but they were stone cold and didn't fit with a hot dish in my opinion. The dish also lacked seasoning. The crispy chicken was nothing special. It relied on the sweet chilli sauce for flavour and the sauce was way too sugary sweet and lacked any other taste. Chicken itself was well cooked but overall I regret wasting money on the dish. The brisket sandwich was nice but the flavour of the brisket was almost completely lost by the volume of the pickled red onions. Overall the food was also quite cold.

Cutlery was also unpolished and waterstained showing lack of attention to detail which was mirrored by nobody coming to clear the table for 15-20mins after we finished.

So summarise, fantastic venue with polite but unenthusiastic and unattentive staff overly let down by poor workmanship in...