Garrick — Restaurant in Stratford-on-Avon

Would rate this evenings visit to the Garrick a 2.5 star as dislike is too harsh and Ok seems too lenient. Since 2010 when we started to visit Stratford and the Garrick on a bi annual visit , we were very impressed with the service that was on offer.However, since COVID we have noticed a decline in service in the restaurant and the occasional meal. I don't expect the pub to offer a Michelin style service but not so long ago, someone would take your food and drink order at the table,whereas today, especially at weekends it feels like being in a scrum just getting to the bar to place your order.You couldn't even see the chef's special because a group of rowdy males were standing in front of it. Unfortunately, this evening wasn't a pleasant visit.Not sure if the closure of 2 restaurants in Stratford had something to do with it but the pub was extremely busy with a minimum wait of appx 45 minutes as they had a party of 15 plus to deal with , even at 6pm on a Saturday evening Not sure if there was a mix up when we arrived but it seemed the pub wasn't aware of our reservation even though we had booked it and had an email confirmation. However, they did manage to find a table and advised of the delay in food. As stated by many reviewers, when you go out for a meal you hope that the food though basic is of good quality. Unfortunately this wasn't the case tonight. The Korean Chicken burger I ordered was in parts both undercooked and overdone and missing a BBQ sauce, the other order of a steak sandwich found to be extremely tough. When I mentioned this to a staff member, they could only apologise and offered a free drink or dessert. It seemed I wasn't the only one complaining about the food quality as well. I did feel that both kitchen and bar staff were overwhelmed with tonight's service and struggled.

There is another pub in Stratford that has adopted a scheme where staff in the restaurant area have tablets to automatically place your order. Maybe the Garrick can...

If your looking for an authentic, relaxing, proper old English pub experience, then this it. Apparently the oldest pub in Stratford-upon-Avon, it is absolutely full of old English charm & character, which along with the candle lighting gives it a great atmosphere & ambience. It's obviously in a tourist hotspot, so not being that big, does mean it can be pretty busy inside at times, but even so, we had no trouble getting a table for a meal. It's quite darkly lit inside, which adds to it's appeal, some may find it almost spooky (luckily the resident ghost didn't make an appearance on our visit!), and have difficulty reading the menus. I found there to be a pretty decent choice of beers on offer for it's size, with a wide range of better than average food menu options available. We all ordered different meals, steak & 'Ruddles' ale pie, battered cod & a wagyu burger, and all agreed they were very tasty & well cooked. Unfortunately, this was somewhat spoilt by all being served with french fries, rather than proper chips as expected. Obviously appropriate with the burger, but completely wrong with the other meals, especially for an old, traditional English pub.

Overall, I thought the food could be better, it was good quality, but the quantity & presentation wasn't the best, so looked a bit sparse. However, I still think it represented good value considering it's tourist location. Service was welcoming & friendly, and offered a completely unrushed, and...

The venue and food was lovely but one of our food orders had been swapped without our knowledge and consent. We ended up having to pay an additional amount for it which we only found out when it was time to pay the bill, which marred the experience.

My mother had ordered a salad with steak topping, but was later told they were out of steak and so we asked for another topping instead. However we were then later told that they just found out that they still had steak, so we went back to the usual.

However when we received the bill, we were charged for a steak meal instead of the salad that we ordered, and when we asked the reason why, we were told that it’s because my mother had received a larger piece of steak on her salad and a steak for the salad would’ve normally been a quarter of the size she received.

We were unaware of this as it was the first time we were eating there and nobody had told us about this steak “upgrade” prior to paying the bill, so our impression was we were still having a salad with steak topping.

The staff apologised for not telling us about this beforehand but we still had to pay the extra charge anyway and we didn’t want to cause a scene so we paid it, but the more I think about it now the more ridiculous this feels. We did not ask for this and we should have at least been notified prior so that we can make the decision if we wanted to pay more for it, not have it...