The Hart Inn, Sandsend

The food is excellent and reasonably priced. Sadly the service is very poor, the 'specials' were selling out within 1 hour of opening, the waitress was off hand and the landlord was ignorant, shouts at his customers and was very rude. Four of us, myself, my brother and our wives booked for a meal for my brothers 59th birthday on Saturday night. We had to wait for a very long time and when my brother asked light heartedly 'Any progress in the kitchen?' we were told very bluntly that we had to wait as gammon steaks take a long time to cook - cannot be true. We had already booked for a Sunday lunch which they serve from noon to 2.30pm. We arrived on time at 1pm and ordered lamb and beef lunches. 40 minutes later we were told that the lamb had sold out so we asked if we could have 4 beef and after checking with the kitchen we were told 'Yes but it would be about 20 minutes' so we said it was ok. A few minutes later the waitress returned and told us a large party had just arrived and there were a lot more people to serve and it would be a very long time before we would get our meal and not 20 minutes any more. We didn't want to wait as it was now nearing 2pm so we asked for the bill for the drinks we had and she said 'Fine' and stormed off. She returned with a bill and put it on the table without a word and went. We went to the bar to pay and we were ignored by the landlord behind the bar and his one bar staff. We asked the waitress if she could take the money as she was in the bar at the time and she just said 'I can't take it give it to the bar staff'. We waited a while longer and then tried to leave the correct money with the receipt on the bar at which point the landlord started shouting at me saying 'Don't be clever'. I had no idea what he was shouting at me for so l asked him and he just kept shouting in front of a full bar 'Don't try to be clever'. He then shouted at me 'You were in last night now get out'. I was flabbergasted - l asked him 'what have l done?'. He kept shouting 'Get out' and my brother responded by saying 'You're supposed to be the host'. For whatever reason the waitress had presumably taken offence at something and instead of the landlord asking us what the problem was he just started shouting. At 53 years old l am neither rude nor off hand with anyone and l didn't deserve to be treated this way. Earlier in the week l had witnessed another customer who complained that they had found a live crawling insect in their food and he was told that 'It just proves the food is fresh'. He went out complaining. I would not go back to this pub if it was the last place on earth, the arrogance of the landlord which clearly rubs off on his staff is appalling. Give it a miss unless you want appalling and rude service and don't mind waiting a long time to be served.

19 Jul 2009 20:47