Running Horse Inn — Restaurant in Wyre Forest

This restaurant looks good from the menu and photos, but the experience is far from this. My partner and I were booked for a meal at 7pm on Saturday night. Was a little busy, but not exceptionally. We were sat at a very small table for the two of us, and I understand it was only for 2 but still very cramped when plates, cutlery and drinks were on it When ordering, my initial choice wasn't available, which was disappointing and surprising as it was firstly, a weekend and secondly, that it was mother's day weekend. While waiting for our meal (took around 30 minutes so not too bad) we could hear someone from the kitchen screaming across the restaurant "service" which seems a really inadequate and disruptive way of letting servers know to collect food. I didn't particularly enjoy hearing this, getting to a screech at times as clearly the waiting staff couldn't hear. This isn't surprising as the layout means this would be almost impossible to hear when staff were at the other side of the room as there is a fireplace/brick wall partition between one side of the restaurant and the other from the kitchen. We could only hear this as we were seated near to the kitchen doors. When the food arrived it did look lovely with good portion sizes. However, both my partner and I found the main part of the meal to be barely lukewarm, mine was chicken my partner's was steak. There were a couple seated behind my partner where the one meal had been sent back as was cold while we were waiting for our meal. The staff were very apologetic towards the diner and offered to reheat or prepare a new meal. We didn't really take much notice as this can happen from time to time wherever you eat. However, when our meals arrived and found to be barely warm it did seem there was a problem. I tried to eat some of my meal thinking perhaps it was just a part that had cooled quicker than the rest, but I really couldn't in the end. The chips that accompanied my chicken were very hot so had clearly been freshly cooked, but I think the chicken had been either cooked and left too long, or had been cooked earlier in the day and re-heated (inadequately) for my meal, then the chips had been cooked, this seemed the same for my partner's steak. Whichever it was, when offered reheating, freshly cooked or replacement meal neither of us had the appetite for any of those options. The staff were very apologetic and pleasant in dealing with us so no complaints towards them. We decided to just order dessert at this point. As a little time passed there were several other diners complaining about their meals. In fact, every diner around the part we were sitting complained about their meals. There were 5 parties of diners including ourselves and we overheard complaints from all of them whilst we were there, with other diners discussing with us about their complaints of cold food, waiting times and undercooked/ overcooked meals. The waiting staff were all very pleasant, but clearly overwhelmed with all of the complaints. At no point while we were there did the manager approach either us or any of the other diners regarding the meal complaints, it was left to the waiting staff to deal with, which, under the circumstances, showed a complete lack of customer service, care or interest in resolving diners issues. We believe we saw the manager walk past from the kitchen to the bar several times but there was zero acknowledgement from them to anyone of the situation. Although, as we were leaving they happened to walk out from the back of the bar area and called across to us "goodbye, sorry about that" so they were clearly aware we had complained but just avoided dealing with the issue. I will praise the wait staff though for dealing with such a terrible evening so pleasantly, they really struggled and had little support from management, we saw one of them with their head in their hands clearly distressed from dealing with the number of complaints. We won't be returning to this location, but as we still have a giftcard balance we will look at other Chef&Brewers to...

My wife and I came to visit the pub for an evening meal last night and despite booking, when we sat down and read the menu, we were told that the main dish that we would’ve liked, was sold out. Chose another dish and that was sold out, and two further dishes the we would have had were also sold out so we had to have a common denominator that was actually available to eat. Took a bit of time to arrive, but It was itself satisfactory. My wife decided to have a pudding, and asked for the trifle. We were told that it was not available as it had sold out. This was in an evening on a weekday so, choice of meals they are offering for sale are clearly not matching up what they are physically purchasing which is very poor indeed. We attended the second night as we had booked two nights, and my wife and I elected to have the steak and ale pie which we ordered. Two minutes later we were then told that they only had one pie left, so my wife ordered a rump steak. It arrived and was as tender and tasty as a pair of Dr Martin boots. It was exceptionally tough. It was returned and my wife was left with an alternative that was available, of some chicken which was quite nice and management gave it free of charge and rightly so under the circumstances. They seem to lack consistency with food availability in the evenings as yesterday, we were told that both pies would definitely be available so we were very disappointed, when only one pie is available. Not an ideal situation and would not return to the pub again, as there would be no idea whether there was any food available that we would like to eat. All rather disappointing and if you have a menu option that sells well, the idea is that you buy a lot of that because you know that you are going to sell it. Not continually run out of it and then...

Came here for a meal with family after a walk and wished we hadn't. After sitting down the waiter came over and was quick and very polite. After ordering food and drinks for 8 of us plus 2 kids he bought our drinks over and all was well. It went downhill from there. After waiting for nearly an hour just for starters with no one coming over to even give us an update one of our table went to ask how long the food was going to be and the starters came out very shortly after that, as if the starters had been sat in the kitchen for a while, some of the food was also cold. After this we were looked after a little better and the starters were removed form the bill. Then after multiple forgotten items and nearly another 40mins or more the mains were out. We were then offered some free pudding however if we had to wait another 40 mins to an hour then no chance. Not only that the food that did come out was not great. Everything fried was overdone. The rest of the food was overcooked and/or had been left under heat lamps and had dried out. As this is a chain you'd expect the food quality to be the same across all chef and brewers and this was not the case. Clearly the chef/cooks in the kitchen didn't know the finer details mattered. We accepted 50% off our food bill at the end though, but again we waited so long for anyone to pay attention. On top of it all the room we were in was cold (yes it was cold outside) but this was due to the lack of radiators in the room and not the heating not working. One thing I will say is that every member of staff were very polite and apologetic about everything however we felt forgotten about over and over again. Would not return...