The Boot — Restaurant in Three Rivers

I’m going to write something just shy of War & Peace below but to summarise: awful food, poor service, disgracefully over priced. Gets two stars instead of one because of the bouncy castle in the garden.

We had often stopped in The Boot for a drink on family walks. Our son LOVES the playground and there is a nice outdoor space for parents to have a drink whilst children can play. We’ve often seen people eating and we thought it looked great and we had said many times we really needed to eat here one day. Well…what a disappointment.

We ate on a Bank Holiday Monday so the Sunday menu was on offer. It is small but offers enough variety of some nice sounding options. There were 4 adults and a toddler in our party so we decided to split some starters. We went for Chicken Satay Skewers and Bread & Olives and this is where the disappointment started. We were served 3 tiny chicken skewers that honestly resembled something you would expect from a Tesco 3 for £5 frozen party food box. With not even enough for a skewer each and a pitiful amount of meat on each stick, they certainly weren’t worth the £9.50 (!?) we paid (I’ll come on to pricing later). Our olives were small a soggy, suggesting these were tinned/jarred and therefore lacking any freshness. The bread served was a small ciabatta which again was just about enough for a mouthful each around the table. It was completely tasteless and to cap it all off, was still cold in the middle where it had clearly been cooked from frozen. Given how hungry the table was we decided (and in hindsight I’m not sure why!) to ask for another piece of bread. This is where the real fun started…

The bread was ordered and we sat chatting. We waived down a passing waitress (a different waitress to the one who was serving our food) to order some more drinks. This seemed to almost annoy her, given the short, pouty response it got. The drinks arrived and we then proceeded to wait an excessive amount of time for a bread roll. I think after 20-or-so minutes we asked where the bread was. After going to check, it was another 5-10mins before the bread arrived. The same small, bland ciabatta arrived, but this time it was frozen solid in the middle and inedible. After we sent it back the waitress asked if we wanted another one. For fear dying of old age, we politely declined.

After the starters were cleared it took close to 30mins for our mains to arrive. All told, from being seated it took over an hour for us to get our mains. We had ordered the child’s meal to come with the starters so we we now had a toddler who had eaten and was fairly restless (the child’s meal was actually okay but was again vastly expensive for what it was).

We ordered 2x Dirty Boot Burgers, 1x Pie of the day & 1x beef roast for the mains. For £18.50 the burger is a disgrace. A frozen patty with soggy lettuce & tomato with 3 cheap, frozen onion rings on top. The meat was dry and tasteless whilst the tiny portion of chips (literally the same as a child’s meal) were again clearly cheap, frozen produce. The roast dinner was bland and once you got past the giant, plate sized Yorkshire pudding (almost as if it was hiding something…) the portion was again very small. The pie crust was dry (again a sign that something cooked from frozen) and was served with limp, soggy vegetables that resembled boil in the bag (I actually wouldn’t be surprised).

I fully understand the challenges facing the hospitality sector and why prices are higher. What you do expect for the extortionately high prices here is good quality, freshly made food; of which there is none. You cannot charge ~£20 for a main course and serve this rubbish. People (like us) simply...

Where do we start!! We had our wedding booked for Malta this summer and after Covid changed our plans quite a few time, we decided to simplify everything and stay put in the UK. We booked to get married in a local registry office in July 2021 and then started to think around March 2021 that we could actually have a bit of a party after the ceremony. We wanted a location that was chilled and accommodating and a few people recommended The Boot. We arranged to meet with Zoe and discuss some ideas to see if she could accommodate our desires. To say she could accommodate everything we wanted is an understatement. She did absolutely everything we wanted, even if she’d never done it before. We told Zoe that we had planned for a BBQ in Malta and she said ‘WE CAN DO A BBQ?’ And was immediately excited about not only replicating but beating our expectations of what we had originally planned. We also explained that we had a chocolate fountain booked for Malta and she said she had a great contact that would work really well - they did not disappoint. We also had an 8 piece band booked in Malta but thought that would be a bit much for The Boot so instead we had a DJ and a Saxophone which was a good touch to bring the atmosphere (Zoe was very accommodating for this too). We had 60 people dine in her beautiful marquee. The food was INCREDIBLE and we are having messages from everyone to say it was the best food ever. A beautiful bbq suiting everyone’s needs. We also had a buffet in the evening and everyone is still talking about that too! The staff that Zoe had working on the evening were so accommodating but not at all imposing - they seemed as though they genuinely wanted to be there. The Boot is also incredibly child friendly - there’s a huge play park and a massive bouncy castle which was a big hit with the little ones! It really helps parents to relax too as it’s super safe to let them run free. We really cannot recommend an event at The Boot enough. It wasn’t quite Malta but it was all we could have asked for and more thanks to the flexibility and talent of the staff...

I debated leaving this or not but as you are asking for a review I will oblige you. I visited the first Sunday after re-opening. Understandably very busy and longer wait times - not a problem. Prices had risen significantly since pre lockdown, especially for food.

I had the crab cakes starter. A large piece of glass was inside one of them, which I nearly broke a tooth on. Luckily caused no actual damage but clearly could have been a lot worse. The manager came to apologise, said the crab comes pre mixed from suppliers and is just cooked on site, not checked. She offered to take the item off the bill - the idea that you would even consider asking me to pay for it given what happened was laughable. My face must have given this away as she then offered to comp one of the 5 main meals also. I wasn't interested in trying to exploit this further so I agreed to this, if the item would be taken off the menu given it was a ready mix from a supplier. Less than 5 minutes later, the table next to us were served the same item. I asked about this and was told as it had already been ordered they dedided to serve it anyway. Seems very reckless, clearly putting profit and avoiding wastage above customer safety.

Having said all this, it is a beautiful pub in a lovely location with friendly staff. I would just question safety standards in the kitchen and would recommend not eating there if it is busy as the rush to serve clearly gets in the way of any...