The Hollybush Inn — Restaurant in Staffordshire Moorlands

I wasn’t going to put this review on here, even after our experience, but the way that the staff have treated some customers, myself now included, who are complaining about genuine issues is absolutely astonishing.

For any holidaymakers considering going here over the summer. I grew up in the area and this used to be one of my favourite pubs around Leek when under different ownership. In the last few months, the place has completely nosedived, with prepped food left out at the bar for flies to swarm it before being served to customers, while the senior staff are straight up some of the rudest people I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. Please for your own sake take your business elsewhere until new ownership comes in.

The food we were served was left out at the bar for at least 10 minutes on the hottest day of the year at a pub next to a canal, and because of this, was absolutely covered in flies the entire time it was there.

We mentioned this to them and the young girl serving us kindly offered to make new food, so we thought that would be that, not ideal but happy they solved it. But then to see the exact same thing happen a second time, led by the senior staff, was completely unacceptable, something which turns out was happening with everyone’s food. All of the customers in our area that had a view of the bar couldn’t believe what was going on.

Flies are obviously common by canals and in rural areas, but they are also disease carriers. That’s why food needs to be left in kitchens, where fly zappers exist to avoid them going near food. From there it needs to be taken straight to the table, where what happens to it is fair game. To use a lack of space as an excuse to not do this sums up this place’s complete disregard for hygiene.

Even this wasn’t enough for me to go and bother giving such a negative review, but what was absolutely incredible is the response to what is a legitimate concern from multiple tables around our area. Mistakes happen, and no one should have a problem if people genuinely apologise and look to put things right. Instead, they have responded by claiming it is no big deal while slandering and outright insulting my family in response to a different review. Guess they want to scare people with bad experiences so people don’t share their own bad reviews.

I’m completely in shock at how personal they have made this, and have turned something that could and should have been a one off into something that will now be reported to the health and safety authorities, because I genuinely believe the ownership don’t care. Someone in the reviews has already claimed to have got food poisoning at this place a month ago (which the owners typically responded to by deflecting) so if this place genuinely is ignoring hygiene issues, it needs dealing with before something more serious happens.

To those who got to the end of this, there are a number of pubs in the area much more deserving of your business these days, and to anyone who ate there on 30th June, I hope you were ok afterwards.

And finally to address the ownership and senior management directly, I expect you’ll respond to this by claiming we were rude to young staff, or that we demanded undue refunds, or are straight up lying, nothing would surprise me now. This is how children respond to being told off and you clearly can’t accept negative feedback that was quite clearly aimed at helping you improve.

“I was waiting for your review and you failed to disappoint.” A literal quote from the owner. What kind of child starts a response to any customer like that and thinks it’s acceptable?? Even crazier that you do this when admitting you were not on site yourself at the time so are only going off of staff feedback.

Word gets around quick here and this is a well known spot for food and a drink. Keep up the way you’re going and your place will be out of business in six months. I’ll certainly be making sure anyone I’m speaking to in this area knows not to set foot here again until...

I very rarely leave a review and when I do it is usually positive. However, I feel the need to leave my first negative review on this occasion mainly due the sheer rudeness of the servers and in case anyone else going out with family have the experience we had. Starting with the food, the order came wrong but more on that further down. All three of the steaks that were ordered were bad cuts and full of sinues and very fatty which made them virtually unchewable. Also one rare when it should of been medium. All the meals had no more than ten chips. Also the salad was tasteless and slimey with two 1cm cubes of peppers. Now to the real reason of this review the rudeness of the servers. Upon entering I saw tables with reserved on and asked the mature waitress are there any tables for 5 that are not reserved and suitable for 2 elderly disabled people. The mature waitress looked at me angry and head jestured a table to the left and walked off. Then when ordering before I had chance to finish explaining each meal the mature waitress shouted "NEXT" clearly trying to rush. Because of this one of the steaks come as 10oz when it should of been 20oz, one of the main reasons for coming here in the first place. On explaining the mistake to the young waitress the reponse was " at least you have saved some money". Although she offered another one, but said it would be about 45 min wait,  I refused as everybody else's food had already come and as the steaks were horrible im glad it was just the 10oz. I then took one of the steaks back as it was rare not medium rare and the mature waitress simply snatched it off me turned around and shouted "bang this on for 5 minutes" no response to me what so ever. When she bought it back she honestly said "eee y ar" and slid the plate past me to my Grandad, just stopping before it another plate. Then we wanted the plates to be cleared from table for my space but everytime we tried to catch their attention they rushed passed not wanting to ask us how the meals were because they could see they were not fully eaten. Then the worst thing Ive ever seen from someone serving food was several flies landing on food ready to be served of which luckily the people saw and declined it, but what shocked me as the younger waitress simply turned around and started humming to herself rather than offer an apology. I had two elderly people with me who have dementia so didn't want to wait around to complain because it was getting late and nobody was clearly interested. It was a shame as it was our first outing in a month due to ill health in the family and my experience last year here was very positive. Perhaps a staff training day in customer service and manners...

We arrived and had 4 separate tables for a family birthday meal, unfortunately our waitress was a new member of staff, so she didn’t know what the pub sold, we eventually ordered drinks which took over 15/ 20 minutes to get them. Mine wasn’t what I ordered but the staff took it back to the bar but returned with it to say I have to have it as it’s been poured, which I said ok but I don’t wish to pay for it. We then ordered our starters and mains, after 45 minutes later the starters, began to arrive to a couple of our tables but ours didn’t arrive for another 20 mins, so I asked for our youngest sons meal to be sent with the starters as he had been sat for 1hour and 45 mins this finally arrived. Then our mains arrived at the table but we still had our starter plates were in front of us, as the poor waitress was struggling with the size of our group, the Manager had just left her to struggle with no help or guidance. The food was very poor, not hot just warm and not good enough quality for the cost of the menu. We asked for our bill ours came right, and I paid our tables bill at the bar but one of our other tables bills had the drink on which I didn’t order but drank as I had been waiting that long for a drink even though I said i wasn’t paying for something I didn’t order then the very rude bartender refused to take it off the bill. Also all of our the bills had been mixed up and all wrong. All in all a really disappointing experience and overpriced food with extremely poor service by the bar tender/ manager (not the waitress she was great ) I just want to add we were the only tables in the restaurant, so they can’t say it was extremely busy . Won’t be eating...