My wife, daughter and I visited the Butley Ash for an early evening meal to celebrate our wedding anniversary. What a disappointment...
The initial welcome was warm and inviting, we were allowed to choose any table we liked (there was only one other taken) and we chose a table looking out over the busy main road because it was nice and light in the window.
Because of the nice decor and ambience we weren't expecting this to be a chain pub but so it turned out to be. Even so, the menu was slightly different to the usual pop-up pub fair and there was a nice list of specials to complement the large regular menu. My wife ordered an artichoke and goat's cheese gnocchi and I had teriaki surf & turf with our daughter having a tomato pasta off the smallish list on the children's menu. Their only draught ale was a well kept Old Speckled Hen as I was informed by the barman that a couple of their pumps were broken, it turned out this wasn't all that was broken!
Before our meals were delivered (a good 10 minutes after ordering) the server came to the table to say that they had run out of soya beans. We weren't offered an alternative so my wife suggested they might substitute the beans for peas and he went off to inform the kitchen.
After another 10 minutes or so our meals were served by a new server (shift change?). A couple of minutes later she returned to the table to check all was ok, we were still helping our daughter with her meal, so gave the obligatory 'yes, fine'.
Things were not fine as it turns out. The gnocchi was served with peas which was as requested, what they had not told us when they declared soya-gate was that they had also run out of goat's cheese. However, they hadn't run out of goat's cheese rind! The meal had a grand total of about seven 5mm squared pieces of rind. In addition the meal was quite small, so perhaps they had run out of gnocchi as well! And this 'special' was £9.95!
Before I continue I must say that the teriaki surf and turf was exceptional. The steak was cooked perfectly and the king prawn tempura was deliciously crisp and hot. The accompanying chips were a bit soggy but perfectly edible. Also judging by our daughter's plate the pasta was good too.
When the server came to clear the table my wife complained that there was only goat's cheese rind in her meal and that it was relatively small. She retorted that we had not said there was anything wrong at the 'check-back' and that there was nothing she could do about it now!
In all honesty we could have broken free of our English mild mannered-ness and complained mid-meal, but we didn't, however the way she dealt with it was very poor. She offered us a free coffee (as in one) - yeah right, the most profitable (ie. cheap) item in a restaurant accompanied by chef's special ingredient no doubt. We declined and asked for the bill.
When the bill came, it was someone else's (and much more expensive otherwise I might have paid it). Eventually we paid the exact amount on the correct bill, no tip (that hurts me, I can tell you) and we left.
Now we have heard many say that this is a good place and there are already a couple of 4/5 star Yelp reviews. Perhaps you should avoid the early evening, who knows, however the way they dealt with the problems probably means we won't be back to give them a second chance. Poor. read more
