The King William IV, Mickleham

SURREY LIFE....

A delightful Smoked Chicken and Bacon Salad with warm crusty French bread and a mouth-watering Chicken Kiev Supreme with lovely fresh crispy green salad and a buttery mini baked potato plus a pot of creamy mayonnaise (absolutely top quality home-cooked food and generous portions) for �10.00 with FREE desserts included this is true value for money!! I had a wonderful plum and nectarine crumble with fresh cream and my partner had the white chocolate and blueberry homemade ice cream! Having a lovely meal sitting in the sunshine on the terrace of the delightful 18th century pub which is perched on the edge of the Surrey Hills with views to die for goes down as one of our most enjoyable dining experiences.

I was just going to post a quick comment on here as I don�t normally spend time posting on the internet but we did have a quick peek at the comments on this site before we visited The King William and were keen to come back on here to add our own endorsement for the benefit of other�s who may be visiting the Box Hill area. I came back on here to do that this morning and saw a rather irksome new comment that has appeared in the meantime so I�ve taken the extra time to put in my two penneth� worth and summarise our feelings so that other people are not too put off from experiencing the delights of this pub, hidden away as it is, in an exclusive and very lovely part of the Surrey Hills.

Some patrons however seem to suggest that rather than enjoying the views we should maybe er.. inspect the paving stones!! It looks like some people who fraternise this pub spend far too much time with their heads drooped and staring at the floor. A solution for these types maybe would be for the owner to rip all the character out of the pub and ram in a load of decking and other mass produced garden features and reduce yet another delightful and characterful pub garden into a replica of a B&Q display stand.

For heaven�s sake find your backbone and straighten up. Then so long as the assertiveness of the landlord doesn�t stretch to his picking you up by the scrap of your neck and chucking you out you can GET OVER IT. It�s a Free House and along with lots of character pubs, character landlords to chuckle about over a beer, are rapidly becoming extinct and we don�t really want that do we? He�s obviously an individual and as characterful as his garden features! A bit craggy in parts? Good luck to him! Goodness me, bring back the dying breed of independent operators who haven�t been brainwashed into conforming to the behaviour of a growing number of bar and waiting staff who are programmed to behave with a false over-familiar attitude whilst trying to perform an uncomfortable unconvincing impression of bonhomie.

If you�re in the mood to be hovered over and schmoozed for your cash by customer service-speak clones, or slippery ego-masseurs there are plenty of other establishments tripping over themselves to offer all that in this rather precious neck of the woods. One is a pub we discovered not very far away from The King William where all the staff wear bow ties behind the bar! It looks very much as if you may well get served a cheese sarnie on a silver platter in there if you�re feeling a bit needy or your ego requires pumping up. Well horses for courses I suppose and I am in danger of and becoming bitchy pot calling a bitchy kettle black so I will show restraint and not go any further into petty detail about our experiences there!

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25 Apr 2011 13:18