The Royal Oak & Castle — Restaurant in Wealden

We were booked for a table of 10 and the food was frankly damn poor at best. Considering the price of a main averaged at over £15. The pork belly was £18.50 and it was overcooked with soggy veg. My burger was tasteless, with some tired looking salad leaves and a handful of chips. Other meals were equally overcooked and poorly presented. Cod and chips were the fish was deep fried to oblivion and dry. Pies looked like they'd been cooked on the surface of the sun.

Service was slow, and the meals took far too long to come out, not the wait time, but service to the table from the first plate to the last was far too long. There were two waiting staff who could easily carry 4 dishes between them and it took about 15 odd minutes to serve the table the food and one dish was forgotten and came out later than the rest.

The meal was completed with typical ans frankly rubbish microwaved crumble/fudge cake options or ice-cream.

Would not recommend for food nor will be be returning. If I wanted over cooked stuff and microwaved desert I could mess my own meals up at home...

I really want to love this place because it is in walking distance, the garden is lovely and the owners seem really, really nice. We'll happily pop in for a drink but having eaten here a few times now we reluctantly haven't had great dining experiences.

One dish that was meant to be served with a flatbread was actually just put onto a plain, fresh out the packet tortilla wrap. I'd seen a photo of this dish on Facebook before and it looked very different to the version I received. The fish and chips were meant to come with homemade tartare sauce but arrived without - when queried with one of the team we were told - oh you should have ordered that when you placed your order (despite the menu clearly saying it came with it). Our bill was wrong on one occasion and on another the drinks order was very wrong - neither time did we receive an apology and we felt like we were being difficult in trying to sort it out. Eating out should feel like a treat, but sadly the food and service are just a bit of a miss.

It's a lovely place for an early evening...

Staff were amazing. The starter which was the pork belly was amazing too. However our mains were not. Me and my partner ordered the ultimate roast. When it arrived. The potatoes were burnt. We were lead to believe that you got 3 meats. Turns out it was a choice of 2. However when we ordered we weren’t given the choice and then when we mentioned this we were told they had ran out of the lamb. The beef and pork were so dry. The pigs in blankets were the smallest, driest cocktail sausages with no bacon. We were both starving as had only eaten breakfast and were saving ourselves for this “ultimate” feast.

My friends pork was also dire. The kids ham egg and chips came with a boiled egg?

We were all so disappointed that when one of the staff came over to ask. We did say that it was ok and whilst still talking the waitress just walked off.

That was only one member of staff. However the rest of them were lovely and went above and beyond. Just a shame the food was a let down. Especially when you pay £38 for a sharer roast.

Beautiful...