The Swallows Return — Restaurant in Worthing

My wife and I went here for a well earned lunch date on Friday. We had downloaded the Vintage Inns app the night before because it offered £20 off the meal. We booked our table and went along. I spoke to the barman and asked about the £20 discount and showed him the app on my phone, as I couldn't find the voucher. He explained it was £20 off our next meal. Fair enough but not really explained on the app very well.

We decided to sit in the garden as it was a nice day. I noticed a blackboard saying to order from the app and quote the table number. This i did, paid and waited for our drinks and food. After a while we noticed people who were arriving after us getting served drinks and starters, but no sign of our order. Eventually our starters came out, "before our drinks, which is strange " I had the pate, which was very nice, my wife had calamari. The calamari had obviously been taken out of the freezer and dumped in the congealed lumps into a deep fry. It was a solid crunchy mess that my wife struggled to eat. We were not given cutlery but told to go inside and get it. Then the wait for our drinks. Eventually I had to go in and ask where they were? They were then brought out with no apology for the wait. Then we waited another 30 minutes for our mains. I had the Hunters Chicken schnitzel, basically a chicken burger with a few bits of streaky bacon and bbq sauce on, the chips were nice though, although when it was brought out it came with mash and had to be changed. My wife had the prawn linguine. This consisted off linguine pasta in sauce with 4 prawns and 2 cherry tomatoes cut in half. My wife didn't eat it because it didn't taste nice. A bargain dish at almost £16. If I hadn't have already paid on the app I wouldn't have paid. As we left i complained to the manager about our experience. He said the wait for the drinks was down to people at the bar that we couldn't see as we were outside. The prawn serving was their standard ratio of 4 to 5 prawns and that i shouldn't expect what i might make at home," No i expect better from a restaurant " He did offer that the next time we could have a free drink and a discount on our bill. Sadly there won't be a next time. At nearly £60 we were very disappointed all round. A shame as we have had a couple of lovely Christmas dinners there. Definitely...

We’ve eaten here a few times and it’s always been fine, not great but ok. 2 weeks ago we called in for an evening meal. There was a young guy basically serving the restaurant on his own and doing the best he could so this review does not reflect the service from him at all. The older, and I would think more experienced members of staff there were terrible. They offered no help in the busy restaurant and instead gathered behind the bar chatting. We waited 25 minutes and our drinks hadn’t arrived so I went to the bar as the poor waiter was snowed under. At the bar I found 3 members of staff, one messing around on the till and 2 chatting. Nobody so much as acknowledged me! I stood there for ages and even said excuse me loudly but nothing, I returned to our table. By this point I’d pretty much had enough. My husband went to the bar where he met the lovely waiter who got our drinks and apologised that he wasn’t old enough to do them himself, to be fair he was doing enough! Our starters came and they were fine, clearly just microwaved as they had that odd metallic taste but we were hungry and it wasn’t terrible. When my main course arrived I wished we’d just left at the drinks stage. I’d ordered macaroni cheese which had been microwaved so much that one entire side was literally welded to the side of the bowl, it was inedible. Luckily I had salad and some chips with it which I ate. I felt too bad for the poor waiter to send it back and by this point we’d been there so long that I just wanted to pay and leave. We gave him a tip and told him it was for him, I’m sure he shared it but not one other member of staff there that night deserved a penny of it. I really hope that things improve as I’d hate to see another pub disappear...

Terrible experience! When we arrived we were told that our table wasn’t booked, even though we had used the telephone automated service to book the table an hour before and had confirmation over the phone. The waitress was not apologetic in any way and was actually quite rude about it. Once seated we were immediately told that they had run out of ALL roasts. This was at 6 pm and so was quite surprising. Upon looking at the menu there were two vegetarian options, a squash curry and a veggie burger. Had there been a roast available this would have been three veggie options. I chose the squash curry. When it arrived I mistook my squash curry for a children’s portion as it was absolutely tiny! Not only was it very small but the rice looked like it had been chucked on the plate and the meagre amount of curry literary thrown on top. I decided to reject the curry and go without food as it looked so awful. The price of this disappointment was £11.95! In addition my stepdaughter’s beans were so dry and crusty on top she had to stir them to make them look edible and my husbands burger bun was over cooked, as were the onion rings. My husband and I eat out fairly frequently and the rest of Worthing has a good choice of restaurants with very generous vegetarian and vegan options, which is the norm these days. I’ve since discovered that the Swallows Return offers a separate vegan menu Monday-Saturday but choose to deny their customers on a Sunday (presumably because roasts are supposed to be on offer??) The swallows return seriously need to up their game or face closure if they continue serving such rubbish. It’s definitely a case of Swallows ’no...