The White Horse — Restaurant in St Albans

It was my Mum & Dads 65 wedding anniversary; myself and my siblings decided to take them out for Sunday lunch. As we were a party of 12 The White House recommend an upstairs private dining room. The stairs to the private room were narrow with two twists in them, had I known this I would not have booked it as my parents are 85 & 87 and had problems getting up & down.

The table was two tables that rocked along the joint; there was no tablecloth. Cutlery was laid for starter & main but nothing for desert. Most of us had the beef, 30 day aged, it was sliced like tracing paper was full of fat and the knives were unable to cut it. The menu said roasted roots, vegetables of the season, roast potatoes and jugfulls of gravy. My wife and I were the last to be served, my wife did have a parsnip and a small slice of carrot with spoonfuls of cabbage two roast potatoes and a large Yorkshire pudding. Mine; well no roots at all but with the two roast potatoes cabbage & Yorkshire pudding oh and my two slices of fatty tracing paper they call 30 day aged beef,it was stone cold, no one bothered to check if all was good or not. Totally inedible.

The desert was served at the table blackcurrant & apple crumble with jugs of custard. Whilst waiting for the crumble to be served the jugs if custard were getting cold, the chap started well serving the crumble but by the time he reached myself and my wife had no crumble only fruit. He took our bowls back to the kitchen and returned after about 5 minutes with full bowls of the fruit, obviously drawn from a tin as there was no crumble and the custard was now stone cold. Remember how I told you about the cutlery, we still needed spoons. There were no condiments on the table. I decided to complain, my sisters children paid the bill before I could get down the narrow stairs before asking for my share £70.

I did complain and spoke with a lady who said she would get the General Manager to phone me but the call never came. The following day I spoke with an assistant manager called Peter he told me he would speak with the team and get back to me. After two days Peter said that the company would put together an offer package and took my home address.

It's now 8 days since the awful meal in the loft and nothing has happened, no communication, maybe Peter thinks it will all go...

Was taken to the White Horse yesterday to celebrate my birthday. Started very well with a friendly greeting, and our party of ten was shown to two tables. The service was fairly slow, since was very busy. I had ordered the "pink" beef Sunday roast. The meals were served with too long gaps between each serving, and by the time mine arrived last, the early ones served had almost finished. When I saw my meal, I asked the waitress if this was meant to be the pink roast, and her comment was that was what she had put through, and walked off. It looked exactly the same as the well done version which my grand-daughter had ordered, and was already well over halfway through. Since it was obvious the waitress was not coming back in a hurry, I decided to eat what was in front of me, which was ok, but not gastro. Nobody came to ask if everything was ok. When the waiter came to collect our plates, I said to him that I was disappointed that my meal was well-done and not pink, and he apologised and that was it. Earlier on, my son had ordered the pork ( advertised with crackling, which I would have had until told that there was no crackling). My son asked if he could have the stuffing in place of the crackling, and was told this was ok, so ordered the pork. When the bill came, we were charged for the stuffing, not cheap at over £3. When the bill was queried, the charge was taken off. Not the end of the world, but I was disappointed that the level of service and attention did not merit the prices charged for the food. Ambience was fine, and the waitresses friendly enough, but for me the experience was disappointing. More effort needs to be made to get the food to the table at the same time when serving...

We came for my birthday after my parents had had superb experiences at the White Horse in the past. From start to finish the meal was a shambles:

Our aperol spritz was brought as a pint of cider. The useless waiter, who should have had some supervision from the absent manager to train him up, took a lot of persuading to even believe that a pint of cider was not any of the cocktails, let alone bright orange aperol.

Our crab and soup starters arrived with barely any bread and the onion soup was devoid of butter or cheese as it should be made. We asked for non-garlic butter but received garlic butter with our bread.

Our roasts were terrible. The venison was smothered in huge amounts of pepper. The huge Yorkshire’s were poor and the potatoes were so dry as to be completely inedible by all three of us. We had to pay a lot for extra sides and these also disappointed in the case of the deep fried and frankly odd stuffing.

I ordered a mojito, but this arrived with no sugar at all so was unpleasant.

Staff didn’t bring steak knives for the thick venison or a spoon for my soup, we had to ask for these.

The roasts were advertised with “roots” but unless this meant carrots there were none.

All this at a premium price! And scruffy, unfriendly staff avoided us, not asking us how things were or offering drinks, dessert or the bill, we had to call them over.

We arrived in good spirits and not looking to nit pick. But I’ve not had such a poor meal...