The Royal Forester Country Inn — Restaurant in Wyre Forest

This is our second visit to the Royal Forester. Both visits were for their wonderful Sunday lunch and luckily for us they were able to accommodate us and our dog without pre-booking on both visits, even though they were busy. It was a bit of a random find as we were spending the day at the nearby Wyre Valley Forest park, just outside Bewdley.

The pub is a nice size with pool / darts gaming area, TV screens dotted around for sporting occasions such as the Olympics, which was on yesterday. This place is mega dog friendly place where you can eat in the bar / sports room and outdoor eating areas with your well behaved pets. There is also a cosier restaurant area for anyone without a pooch.

The staff are a great team and so friendly and welcoming. Bar has a nice selection of local beers and ciders. Their Sunday lunch menu has a good selection covering all bases (Beef, Pork, Rotisserie Chicken, Lamb) with the Beef, Pork and Chicken coming as a carve your own sharing platter. We ordered the pork and 1/2 chicken and as with our first visit, the food was just amazing. It is so easy to mess up a roast dinner but this place just gets it right.

Meats were cooked to perfection (pink if you went for the lamb/beef as others around us enjoyed), they come with beautifully crisp roast potatoes, roast parsnips and carrots and plenty of gravy. You can add a Yorkshire pudding where your roast doesn’t normally come with one. The accompanying mixed green veg were proper green/fresh and tasted as good as they looked. We also had some sweet red cabbage that balanced the flavours nicely. We had to order the cauliflower cheese side as it looked so good on other tables and we are glad we did as it was proper tasty with a lovely crispy top (as it should be !!). This is how a Sunday lunch should be cooked with every element given equal attention to detail. In addition to this, the prices are just about right as the portion sizes are on the large size.

If you are in the area, you have to give this...

Very disappointing. Such a lovely, quirky place just a shame the food and staff let them down. The staff were quite young and were doing their best but the man behind the bar (in more casual clothing), who I am assuming was the manager, had a terrible attitude. Abrupt and quite rude. Some of the starters looked lovely, especially the fish cakes, but others were very disappointing. The most expensive starter, the chicken liver parfait, tasted quite strange and was hidden under an unrecognisable layer of pink gloop. I had the avocado & chimichurri bruscetta which looked disgusting and tasted even worse. What were they thinking to even attempt to serve it? I couldn't eat it. Whilst we were eating, a customers dog that wasn't on a lead, kept coming over to the table and was jumping on the sofas and up on the seated bar area. Several of the waiting staff, including the manager (who had just been standing at the till wiping his nose with the back of his hand ) and a female member of bar staff (who was constantly biting her nails) were petting the dog and carrying on serving without washing their hands. I was offered a dessert instead of my starter. I refused! Our main courses were served but we had no cutlery. When we finally got the waitresses attention, a bucket of cutlery was unceremoniously dumped on the table. The oil in the fryer obviously needed changing as the fish & chips (almost black, soggy potato wedges) were very oily and served with stone cold peas. As for the salmon, the portions were a decent size but were overcooked & dry inside. It was served with cold broccoli and lentil dhal that was so spicey, some people couldn't eat it. No one came over to our table during the meal to check if everything was ok and it was very difficult to get the attention of the staff. When I went to pay, the manager made no attempt to apologise. I'm sorry to say that quite a few of our large party will not...

I visited on a Wednesday and took them up on the 2 course for £10 menu.

Visit 1 As soon as we had sat at our table we had to ask for it to be cleaned as it was so sticky. The starter Buffalo wings was fantastic. I went for steak with red wine sauce for the main. The steak that came out was such poor quality that i sent it back. The steak they replaced it with was better but the red wine sauce was so full of salt it totally put me off.

Visit 2 We missed a week and again went on Wednesday to see if we could give them the benefit of the doubt. The table we sat at in the snug came coupled with a number of dead flies on the window sill. Exactly what you want to see when you are about to dine! Again £10 menu. Again Buffalo wings fantastic. After realising you have to add chips to the burger as a £4 extra i opted for steak again with handmade chips not wedges and a blue cheese sauce this time. The steak was again poor quality inbetween the sinew i got a few bites. The chips were unseasoned and some looked like wedges and the sauce was a burnt mess undescribable as blue cheese or any other type of sauce to be honest. To top off my 2nd bad experience a pint of Guiness is £4.80. I'm not naive, i expect prices to have risen a bit and I'm used to city prices but this is well out. What shocks me about the poor quality of food is that this venue is surrounded by farms and farm shops. Needless to say that unless this vastly improved we wont be returning for a drink or food. A very...