Old Orchard, Harefieldback to pub details please note - reviews on this site are purely the opinion of site visitors, so don't take them too seriously.
Expensive. Frozen food served as "fresh". Normal Brake Brothers offerings.
Attracts the wealth ponces since they (ignorantly) buy by price, not quality OR taste. Accordingly, they “love it”.
No, wouldn’t go again. Pretty awful experience, frankly.
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Thanks for taking up the cudgels over my review!
Fair play, mate, as most of what you say, I agree with.
But, I'll go to my grave insisting that the superb view of the gravel pits etc (ie man-dug, not naturally-occurring lakes) should not be paid for by gastro prices?
I'm glad you get slightly more out of The Old Orchard than I do, though! :-)
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Although I do totally understand the sentiment of your comment renzarov, I think a fundamental point is being missed.
Yes, we all know it’s primarily a restaurant. But what the Brunning & Price Pub Co try to achieve with their chain of Gastro pubs, which locally includes the Cricketers in Sarratt, is both a pub and a gastro restaurant in the same skin. And having the experience of so many of my favourite countryside pub watering holes being ruined over the years by the PubCo sending in a group of interior design knob heads who plaster Farrow & Ball pastel paint colours over all surfaces including ancient timbers, replace all seating with something that is impossible to sit on, lay everywhere for dining and make the interior look like it’s something out of “Footballers wives go mad in Ikea”, then I think they have done a pretty good job. And the fact that the bar area and surrounding seating can be used by the locals as if it was their local pub, whilst diners and others wanting a bit of peace and quiet can find it in the seating away from the main bar.
So I am in the ‘rate this place highly’ camp in that I think it is a very good balance of decent pub and gastro restaurant, with a very good well-kept Ale offering, decent looking food (although I can’t really comment on this as I have never eaten here) and a view to die for.
The only niggle I do have is that it is very expensive, with most of the ales currently at a wallet hurting £3.90. But there is a 60p reduction on all beer and wine sold between 5pm and 7pm on weekdays, which explains why it was busy with the local middle aged blokes enjoying an after work ale on your early Friday evening visit.
And as for that view. The Old Orchard must have one of the finest views of any pub I have ever visited. It has superb views of the Colne Valley stretching across the pleasure lakes of Broadwater Park and Denham Country Park and taking in the River Colne and its tributaries and the Grand Union canal on which you can make out the moored canal boats and barges. In fact the scenery is so good and unspoilt that you cannot see another building in the whole of the panoramic view, which is amazing when you consider this all lies within the M25. But I guess you are a very hard person to please renzarov to consider this to be just a nice view of a pit..
I seem to be more easily pleased and once again yesterday evening, I rated the pub, the view from the terrace and my pint of Mighty Oak Oscar Wild very highly indeed..
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Mmm...I think people slightly over-rate this place, which is not really a pub so much as a restaurant.
True, it does have a good selection of well-kept beers, the view of the pit (not lake) is nice, & the garden is excellent in summer.
But with such an emphasis on food & dining, it's bound to be pricey & be emphasising restaurant values rather than traditional pub ones?
Having said that, I went there yesterday 5.15pm & it was heaving at the bar with noisy, middle-aged blokes treating it like a spit n sawdust place!
This was as unpleasing as the other side of the coin, perhaps, especially when one wants to chat quietly with friends...We scurried to the quieter, main back part of the place to get away from the obnoxious barflies!
It was also pretty damn warm as a result of a blazing fire overheating things.
But I did have a good pint of Old Rosie 7.3% cider, although it must have cost my mate over �4 (?!?).
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We thought the Old Orchard was the best of Harefield's pubs. The views from the front of the pub and the car park of the Colne valley were outstanding and I have to say that I really like these Brunning & Price pubs. The interior is similar to others in the chain and is very appealing. Beers on were Fullers London Pride, Brunning & Price Original Bitter, Tring Side Pocket For A Toad, Rebellion Mutiny, Lymestone Ein Stein & Red Squirrel Red Tail. Cider was Westons Wyld Wood. Well worth the detour from the centre of Harefield and our pub of the day.
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Only discovered this place last night and what a find! Worth visiting just for the fantastic views. The elevated location, wide expanse and lakes really make for a lovely setting.
Looks like a lot of people come here to dine and the food looked a bit on the pricey side but it would be worth it because of the location. There's a large grassed outside area so I didn't take a good look round the inside but from what I did see it looked to be nicely decked out with a lot of interesting memorabilia adorning the walls on the way to the loo.
They had several ales on, including Tring; the beer I had was in perfect nick.
Staff were also welcoming and I'll certainly be back.
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Love this pub! Great food, lovely atmosphere and fantastic view.
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