We've been eating at the Black Horse for more than 5 years now and to be honest I've very rarely had a bad experience. When the experience has been less than adequate it's always been down to the waiting times for being served, not the quality of the food itself, nor the attitude of the staff there. Sadly our visit on 21st May 2012 was a strikeout on all counts.
I'm going to run through the key areas I feel that let the place down last night: The environment, quality of service, speed of service, food and attitude. And then make a recommendation. It won't be good.
The restaurant itself seems slightly lacking at the moment. Tables weren't laid out properly. Our table (for 8) had two wine glasses on it with napkins in, some cutlery and nothing else. Very messy. Candle holders had no candles, but more importantly the whole place looked like it needed a quick 30 minutes attention to bring it up to scratch. Not a big thing to complain about but when the food lets you down, you notice everything. But I'm jumping the gun, I'll come to the food in a moment.
Seating ourselves down at 6:30 we began to place our orders. The Server seemed like a nice enough chap but obviously wasn't trained to ask the ladies for their orders first. Minor niggle? Yes. But still amateurish. We'd placed our orders (2 cold starters, 2 garlic breads and 3 chicken tempura, and a selection of mains) by 6:45 and our server had headed back to the kitchen only to find that the Black Horse Sizzler (a mixed grill) was unavailable for 3 members of our party. Now if this was Lobster Thermidor or Beef wellington I could understand. They're complex dishes. But a Mixed Grill was unavailable? They clearly still had the capability to serve chicken and steak, so I can only assume a lack of sausages might be to blame? Either way it's still a poor show. Nipping to a local shop to pack out your shortfall before service begins isn't difficult to do. Again an amateurish performance. We re-order and away we go.
By 7:30 there's still nothing on the table and so we find our server and make a small but important foray into the land of complaining. To be brutally honest, we were the only people in the place eating and I could knock out 2 garlic breads, 3 tempura chicken, a prawn cocktail and a pate myself in less than 15 minutes. Clearly the chef has other prioritiesperhaps he's making sausages?
The team leader/duty manager/whatever comes over and apologises and to be honest was as useful as a chocolate fireguard. But at least they know theyre up against the cosh at this point. If I was her, I'd know to get the food out there, make it great and buck my ideas up. Sadly not. The mains start to come out and everything looks okay. Chips are woefully underdone to the point of having the same complexion as an albino toad but we ignore that. For the moment. Then the Sea Bass comes out and that's so cold and undercooked in the middle that the little chap is pretty much looking to return to the wide open sea and live to swim another day. In all seriousness, it's cold and has that gorgeous gelatinous lustre to it that sushi does. Not good when you've ordered it cooked. We complain and are amazed to find a chap coming out from the kitchen (dressed more for a casual day out than a chef, god knows what his role was) who began to argue with us that the fish was in fact, piping hot. Being able to slide my finger inside the poor Sea Bass and feeling the coldness didn't seem to dissuade him. Did he take it back to the kitchen? No. It was dumped onto the table and left there. Our not so friendly chap left in something of a huff and clearly wasn't pleased. Now, we all know things go wrong in a kitchen. What I don't expect is for someone to ARGUE with me over something so blindingly obvious.
Not wanting to stick around for dessert we opt for an early bill. The Sea bass is removed from the bill but we still end up paying £80 for what was one of the worst meals I've ever had out. The average Lamb Henrys, Panini's, Steaks etc didn't make up for the slow and lazy service, lack of quality and disgusting attitude of multiple staff members who couldn't care less about whether we enjoyed our meal.
We'll not be heading back, neither will our relatives/friends etc. read more
