The William Bray , Shere Guildford Surrey

Visited here for a friends 30th birthday, 6 of us in total. It's a great looking pub and ambiance is good. Friendly barman and good banter.
The menu isn't too large which is great, with some innovative dishes alongside gastro pub favourites. Wine list is good too, with Lan Rioja always a star.
The food and service however is really dissapointing. The starters were particularly poor, crispy mozarella was greasy and fried in dirty oil, the goats cheese salad was appalling - i think it was Boirsin with overly dry beetroot slices - obviously pre-prepared. However one highlight was the crab and scallop tempura salad - which was fabulous.

With the mains 4 had steak, as one of the ladies was pregnant she asked for well done steak, which seemed to piss of the chef - the steak turned up half the size of the other steaks which were cooked medium rare, however they refused to replace it with another steak of same size [this wasn't shrinkage, just a tiny steak], the other steaks were just tasteless.
2 of the other girls had fish [sea bass] which they commented was very nicely cooked and tasty.

I don't know what the policy is at the Bray, but you would expect better, especially when the restaurant wasn't that busy [maybe this is the reason why?] All in all we left very dissapointed. Service was lousy and a certain amount of arrogance.

with the dessert we had treacle pudding which had to be sent back as had gone hard in the micro-wave! The cheese board was pretty good though with good choice of ripe cheese etc, and chocloate brownie a real sensation.

Don't know if other diners have had the same experience, hopefully it was an off night?

22 Dec 2010 12:00