The Trusty Servant, Minstead

We visited the pub for Sunday lunch yesterday and I felt compelled to write this review in light of the bad service my husband and I received.

My meal started well with some lovely whitebait whilst my husband's starter of salt beef was very average. For mains we went for Sunday roast and after waiting for an hour and a half we were served raw vegetables and overcooked beef.

Upon collecting my half eaten remains a lady who had been very nice and attentive up until that point failed to ask if the food had been ok so my husband felt compelled to mention how poor my food had been. The owner's response was to say that if we had drawn it to her attention earlier she could have done something about it. Normally I would accept this to be a fair comment, but in light of the fact that we had waited 1.5 hours for our food I was just past the point of sending it back and waiting for another meal at that stage.

In any event, when my husband went to pay and said that he really did not think we should have to pay for my main, the owner's response was that they had tasted it in the kitchen after and they thought there was nothing wrong with it, so I am not sure what she had meant when she said they could have done something about it earlier....

This is when things got really bad. To my utter disbelief the owner went on to concoct her own story as to why she thought I had not eaten my main. She advised my husband that she was "skeptical" of our story about why I had not finished my food and said she thought that I had filled up on the starter and was too full to finish my main meal (note - I am a 33 adult, not a 5 year old child)! So in other words she was accusing us of lying about my main meal to get �10 taken off our bill.

In summary, if you do decide to go to this pub (don't - go to The New Forest Inn which is much better)...don't order the Sunday roast and if your food is crap don't complain to the owners and they will just accuse you of lying and make you pay for it anyway.

5 May 2009 15:16