The White Horse, Rendham

I regularly visited this pub about 30 years ago when it was one of the first in the area to offer basket meals - sausages, scampi or chicken as I recollect. We went for an evening walk recently and dropped in for a drink. The beer we drank was from the Victoria brewery at Earl Soham - a few miles away. The pub has a bit of character, is very clean and is generally a nice place to sip a beer.

The menu took our eye, talking of local produce and home cooking. We were impressed enough to decide to visit again, this time to eat. I rang to book, cycling made me slightly unsure of our arrival time , so I hesitated while mentioning this to the landlord. His reaction was to say - "well do you want to book or not?". Slightly rude thought, but booked nevertheless. We arrived by bike (three of us and put the bikes in the beer garden at the rear of the pub. The landlord appeared immediately and asked us to move the pubs to the front of the pub next to the road where we were unable to see them, but anyone passing by would be able to. We didn't have locks, and the bikes were expensive, so we weren't keen. This didn't go down well with our host and he became quite agitated. Eventually we compromised, by now feeling perhaps we had made a poor choice of venue. Anyway, we went into the pub, the atmosphere relaxed a little and we went to our table. No one else was eating and there was only one other couple in the pub. The menu hinted at home cooking. What actually arrived though was a poor quality mass produced pasty with a presumably home made coleslaw that was unappetising. The chips may be chunky, I'd lay money on them being out of a catering pack though.

Overall although the venue is nice, the landlord isn't my idea of a convivial host and the food we had was about on par with KFC. Disappointing and we won't be going in again.

10 Jun 2010 21:48