The Plum Tree, Swindon

We have been here before and always wondered how the place remained open considering there hardly seems to be anyone in there. An experience yesterday proved why...

First of all, there was only one staff member behind the bar whilst there was people waiting almost 15 minutes to be served.

Then when we got our food (a vegetable lasagne and a cheese and broccoli bake) the waiter announced them the wrong way around and my friend and I ended up with each other's food and sadly we had dug into the dish before we realised because they were covered in cheese so looked exactly the same!

Now ordinarily I like vegetable lasagne so I thought I would be fine with that one - wrong. It was mostly pasta with a huge amount of cheese and hardly any vegetables. I tried to eat it but really didn't enjoy it, so when I pointed this out to a staff member I was informed that they could do another broccoli bake for me but I would be charged for it. I refused! So I ended up eating something I didn't enjoy purely because someone else had made an error and wanted me to pay for it. Er, no thanks.

The barman was very apologetic and said that he is normally in the kitchen and will personally guarantee that next time I will get the food I requested - but to be honest I don't know if I will go in there again though. I made some recommendations as to how to distinguish the foods from each other (i.e. put a slice of tomato on the top of the veg lasagne, or a little flag of some sort identifying what the food is!) so it would be interesting to see if that happens... what would they have said if I was a vegetarian and had been given a meat lasagne, and not realised until I had cut into it?!?? Or even if I had an allergy to something in the lasagne that was not in the B&C bake - would they have expected me to pay extra then?

Apparently the venue is being taken over in January 2011 - we can see why.

Shame this has happened - the pub itself is a lovely building.

6 Dec 2010 12:29