Welcome Stranger — Restaurant in Teignbridge

First, I’d like to start with a positive - the staff were very friendly and I was partially refunded for my poor experience.

After travelling for 18 hours, and not eating anything for over 24 hours, we decided to call in for a bite to eat.

Maybe it was a bad day - but my goodness, was the food bad!!

I ordered an ‘onion loaf’ which apparently they’re famous for! I didn’t know quite what to expect but it turned out to be an onion baji the size of a cauliflower. Virtually everyone at the bar had a comment or two about this strange and super-sized thing rolling about on a plate. Upon cutting it open it was simply raw batter, and steamed onion. It was inedible. Almost like eating a loaf of bread that needed an hour to bake, but was given five minutes and full of steamed onion mixed among the glue. The outside was fried, and the inside (literally the size of a whole cauliflower) was raw. Completely inedible. I politely sent it back after a couple of mouthfuls. All the time the other guests were laughing and I don’t blame them. What a strange thing to serve… but surely make it edible?

Next, the ‘main’ was a burger. I thought that would be the safe option to go for. But this too was inedible, and even the chef agreed on this occasion. After taking one bite, it became apparent that the burger was completely raw inside. Which, despite a common misconception can be quite dangerous with ground beef - it should not be treated like steak and served rare. In addition, the onion in the salad had not been peeled and there was a slightly odd taste to the slaw. If I get food poisoning, I’ll know exactly where from.

To their credit, this was taken off the bill. But the monster glue ball was not.

My partner had more success than I did, in that her meals were at least edible, but the chicken pie was over-cooked, dry and bland. The chips were just the usual frozen and deep fried stuff served everywhere and the ‘fresh’ peas were tinned. The starter of nachos was completely wrong too - not cooked correctly and the missing some main ingredients - and the sauce supplied wasn’t salsa, it was ketchup!

All in all, a very, very poor performance and resulted in the first time I’ve ever sent anything back anywhere.

Two stars just because the staff...

Went there this evening for a family treat and unfortunately servery disappointed with the lack of service and quality of food and won't be eating here again. The service was slow all evening despite being not particularly busy. After our drinks order was taking we waited 25min to place our food order. In the end I had to grab a member of staff even though they kept walking past our table many times. They then mucked up our order. When ordering 2 starters and 3 portions of cheesy chips to all come out the same time they only took for 1 portion of chips. So when one of the kids got to eat we had to wait for a further 2 portions of chips to arrive. Then we waited over 30min for the chips to arrive with our mains. Even though we witnessed a table who arrived after us receive there food before us. When our food did arrive parts of our meals were burnt as it seemed as of been left under the hot plate a little too long. My eldest adult daughter had the roast, were unfortunately she said most of the food was over cooked. Including the beef and turkey. I had sausage, mash, peas with onion gravy. Unfortunately the sausages were also overcooked and appeared burnt. My partner then had the Vegetarian Lasagne. The edges of which were also burnt and the Lasagne tasted awful. To the point were she left her meal. Even though my partner had clearly left her meal no member staff came to our table to ask if everything was ok? We often had staff walk past the table and even noticed on numerous occasions staff stood by the bar looking towards our table. But no one came over to ask if everything was ok. After we had finished we waited a further 10min before someone came to clear glasses. At that point my partner mentioned the Lasagne and we were offered a refund but that was all. We then waited for the bill but after several minutes of no one came. We were forced to go to the bar to pay, even though we were seen by staff looking to be leaving. Sadly a truly poor experience from start to finish and as a family won't be returning. Which is a shame as our pervious experience with the place...

Nice enough previously, revisited for lunch today at it was truly dreadful, posted to the table, no menus of any kind, went up and got them and the staff genuinely apologised, fine these things happen, weren’t told about a roast option which would’ve been nice, not in any menu it seemed, table next to us spoke about it? Potato skins to start, good enough but 2 of us had them and the portion sizes weren’t the same, one had the pie, it was fine, 2 have the pork steaks, massively overcooked and the giant onion loaf was under cooked in the middle and soaking in burnt oil, I had the bbq chicken plate, pale undercooked skin swimming in some disgusting sweet sauce, the chicken was leather and tasted almost stale like it had been re heated, definitely was not freshly cooked, barely edible, side salad and fruit was nice though, chips all round, cheap frozen chips, unsalted, dry and sad looking, then to pudding, how could it get worse? Well it drastically did! 2 had the waffles, clearly the cheap shop bought frozen waffles you get at bookers, dry and rock hard! Absolutely awful! Nice ice cream but hard to screw that up I guess, I had the bread and butter pudding special which is by far the worst desert I’ve ever been served.. clearly been nuked in a microwave, dry and tough through out, no flavour or sweetness, they did comp this on the villas I’d had enough at this point and complained to the wait staff who were great!! Complained about the waffle deserts but nothing done about them, asked for no peas on one of the pork dishes too, of-course it came with with seemingly extra peas.. place is nice, staff are good and attentive, who ever is in that kitchen needs sacking immediately! Not worth the money sadly, it’s was worse than weather spoons today! £140...