Chalkhill Blue — Restaurant in Test Valley

The Service today is dismal. The staff (some) are hopless and rude. Left at table for 20 minutes, with still no service, had to go to counter and ask they visit our table . The waitress did not like the fact a drink was required before ordering food, and we have already been waiting 20 minutes. She even tut ed. Not sure you should be serving at the bar , covid 19 rules, but people were going to the counter as they were not getting service, although we had been waiting longer, look at photo. The food was delivered but we had to wait for the Cutlery. When the Cutlery did arrive at the table it is was dirty, very dirty, wash stains and looked rally grubby, We sent sent them back as we were not going to eat using them, it was explained that due to the covid rules they are not allowed to clean the utensils personally! Being a former KP (kitchen porter), in my younger days, I found it hard to believe an industrial dish washer/steamer did not leave the utensils sparkling clean, as any household dishwasher would!! So we had to wait for clean set of utensil, all the time our food was getting cold. when the utensils arrived we were then told they were hand cleaned!!! err but you just told us you aren't allowed yo personally hand clean them. So we ended up waiting so long for clean utensils that food went cold. I had to returned my food as it was cold, then waited for food to be redone. Having a bad day at this place.... oh dear. could it be me? I was feeling very disappointed. Everyone is sighting Covid 19 as the cause of various issues..but...hold on is poor hygiene or poor service the result of covid 19......errr I don't think so. Get a grip, take responsibility for your actions and that of your staff. The fact you are a Service Industry(Pub/restaurant) and as such the understanding of what a service means should be understood and as such needs to be applied. Requesting a drink before a meal should not be considered an inconvenience but a respectable requirement. Service with a smile and that a customer is always right (with exceptions) needs to be applied. 99.9% of the places I visit and eat are great or fantastic, unfortunately these you tend not to review, but as like today you feel you need to make people aware of the odd bad occasions at certain venues. I feel it is not particularly the place, but the staff they have working on that particular shift that determine the standard of Service, you are likely to get. Now I don't like what I will add here, but our Service Industry has some pointers it needs to learn here from the USA., arrrr they you go I said it.....

The meals are nothing special, just your plain normal bog standard pub lunches on the low to middle market. Better pub lunchtime menus and service available in the area, that all I will say.

Update 20.08.2020 Thanks for the request of a email address which was sent to yourself 19 hours after being requested. Now some 4 days after the event I am still awaiting for a response, even though I have sent the email address on multiple days....hmmm I can only conclude that you had no intention of responding but was only trying to make any potential viewers of the review think that you care about the reviews given and the way your Pub is run. To that, I shout out to any others out there that have been asked to supply contact details, did you get contacted If yes please comment on this Review.

Staff take guidance from the people above, which...

Bitterly disappointed is an understatement ! Everything started of very well found ourselves a nice table ordered our food at the bar, it came fairly quickly for a busy sunday lunch time. I ordered a lamb and mint burger and me and my partner had 3 tapas style starters to share, the halloumi fries are more like odd shape chunks deep fat fried just oily cheese really. We also had pee and potato chip shop style fritters about the only thing I actually enjoyed! The third and final tapas style was a hunters chicken with the cheese that had been microwaved beyond belief it had welded the chicken to the prison style tin! The bbq sauce was so overly sweet it had us squinting trying to eat it!

Now to the mains! 15 chips on a plate??? That's an appalling portion nothing like short changing customers to increase profit ! The burger was actually nice until I found a cheeky blue strand of cotton in it I did give them the benefit of the doubt and checked to see if it was mine but it wasnt. I took my plate up to the bar and informed the staff behind the bar looking a bit baffled and probably not knowing the respone to give I told them I didnt want another, both staff members just stood and stared at me for a second and said okay? No offer of taking it off or anything else! We sat for another 10 minutes maybe thinking there would have been good communication and a manager had been informed we were wrong! So totally fuming that no one seemed to care and not wanting to sit there any more we left, both staff members that had taken my food both put their heads down and couldn't even say goodbye on the way out. What an absolute shame and disappointing visit leaving me out of pocket and still hungry! Never...

Went to this pub for the first time tonight as we had received some discount coupons/advert in the post. Place looked quite nice to start but noticed the padded bench seating we were sat on there was some significant rips in the fabric. We could see the place was short staffed and getting busier so ordered on the app. Drinks came fast. However waited over an hour and our food hadn't turned up. Was about to go to the bar to ask about this but a lovely waitress finally came to our table to apologise and said that our food order hadn’t made it to the kitchen. She kindly offered to give us an 50% discount but we had already paid on the app…? Ordering apps can really help a restaurant if they’re low on waiting staff to take orders, but best to make sure the app works or not have it as an option. Food came out 10 minutes later and our burgers were good but not sure if worth the price. We would have stayed for dessert but having to wait so long ruined our experience and we also had to get home. I think this pub may be struggling and we potentially could have been new repeat customers but not sure we will go back. Waiting over a hour is not acceptable in any restaurant. There are a lot of good pubs in the surrounding Andover area to compete with and sending out coupons isn’t the answer. The waitresses were lovely but you need more of them to provide a good level of service or make sure if you’re offering an ordering app...