Cool little stop with great coffee and great service. I recommend you stop in if in the area. I may…read moretry the food here on my way back from the coast.

Me and my partner managed to discover this gem of a pub by randomly choosing somewhere close on the…read moresat nav whilst we were away for my 30th birthday. The pub is beautiful and cosy, the landlady was kind and cheerful and the food.....oh god, the food! We both had a starter of pigeon, not something you usually see on a pub menu and it was superbly cooked and tasted amazing. For my main I chose the steak burger with chips and onion rings, the burger was big, flavoursome and juicy and the touch I like is that the tomato ketchup on table was all homemade, not from a bottle! We will certainly come back to this awesome place if we are ever near the area again because it was outstanding!!

Great gastro pub. Fab food, atmosphere and really friendly service. Strongly recommended.read more

The Bear has become a good quality gastro pub recently with a nice atmosphere and a good menu and…read moresome great specials. The ambiance is relaxed country pub and the staff are very helpful. There is a reasonable ca park as it gets quite hard to park in the summer. I have visited for lunch and dinner and both were very nicely presented and well cooked. The skate is very tasty and the scampi and Jenga chips are good. The costs can be a little bit higher for lunch but the menu is very similar and therefore for dinner, I thought it was quite reasonable. Peter who used to be at another Billericay restaurant is the restaurant manager and as normal makes sure we get well looked after.

Browsing the web we came across a beer festival in this pub. Not having visited before we decided…read moreto take a trip out and check it out. What a find! Lovely 'quaint' old pub, a traditional ale house with friendly service and, more to the point, a fantastic selection of real ales. My heaven. Marquees set up in the garden with barrels ready to be imbibed. Quiet during the day but, I am sure, extremely busy in the evening. Going to keep an eye out to visit next year with friends.

I got stuck in the middle of the British country side and the B&B I ended up at highly recommended…read morethis place. I would come back jut to eat here. I was raised partly in Italy and this was some of the best Italian food I've had in 15 years of visiting the U.K. since I graduated Uni there. An Italian family own and operate the place and they're hospitality is second only to the food. Absolutely amazing meal, just tell them what you don't like and they'll bring the rest. I wish I could give them more stars. I will share some of the photos from the beautiful evening I spent on the patio. I just wish I had a lover with me to share the experience with.

The new management have uplifted this delightful country pub and Chef offers a delicious freshly…read moreprepared menu as well as specials each week. Definitely the place to go for a family Sunday lunch to enjoy traditional fare or to enjoy their regular theme nights which include Quiz Night and Fish Night.

The Compasses is situated in Great Totham beside the B1022 Colchester to Maldon road.It has a large…read morecarpark,restaurant,TV bar and garden.A good selection of beers and lagers were available including 4 different real ales.The food menu was quite comprehensive and reasonably priced.However at the time of my visit I was told that as the day before had been Fathers Day they had experienced a large demand for food and as a result a large proportion of the menu was unavailable.Also advertised was an offer of two meals for £10 all day Mondays and Tuesdays and this was unavailable for the same reason despite it being a Monday.We finally managed to order something they did have but sadly two of the four meals served were tepid rather than hot.However the food was reasonably presented and the service was prompt.As a first time visitor to this pub I was left with the feeling that as good as the beer was the food left room for improvement.As I visited at 6pm I could not understand why they could not have obtained emergency supplies sometime during the day to have at least been able to offer the more popular dishes on the menu.In the interests of fair play I shall revisit in the not too distant future to see if my first experience was just an unfortunate blip or the norm........Only time will tell.

Visited twice this week for an excellent beer festival selection. Perfectly kept and presented…read moreales, served with a smile and chat. Lunched on Saturday, with a superb Portobello Mushroom sandwich, which was delicious and left us wondering why anyone bothers with planet-destroying meat at all! Only small negative generally is the focus on food and booked tables which sometimes makes it hard to grab a table just for drinks. Need to keep bookings to a dedicated area with the rest allocated on a first come basis. It's a pub after all, not a restaurant. Otherwise, great place and highly recommended.

Sorry the starters the crackling was so hard I could not eat it it was like a hammer it wasn't…read morecrackling it was just so hard to break your teeth on it And the pork belly was very small but I must omit the roast potatoes were very nice

Recollections May Vary... but this Shambles Won't…read more CHECK-IN DISASTER On arrival, we were asked to scribble our contact details on the back of a scrap of paper snatched from the till. We confirmed breakfast for 09:00am the next day, as we had to get home early to avoid extra kennel fees for our dog. We were then escorted through the back yard--past broken furniture and barrels--to reach an external block. This, we were told, would also be our morning route for breakfast. BREAKFAST? WHAT BREAKFAST? At 09:00 sharp, we found that route locked and the pub in darkness. Walking to the front, we met three other stranded guests who also couldn't pay or get in. A few minutes later, two men walked out, saw all five of us standing there, said nothing, and drove off. After calling the pub four times (no answer), and trying each external door, we eventually found the front door now open but the pub still deserted. Keys for the entire building were sitting on the bar. We waited at a breakfast table... nothing. Eventually, I went behind the bar into the kitchen and found the same two men chatting at the back. Nothing was switched on. When I asked what was going on, they casually said they'd "be out shortly." By now it was approaching 09:15. We had to leave, and when one of the men appeared to ask if I still wanted breakfast, I explained it was too late. Apparently, in their world, this counts as a reasonable attempt to serve us. THE COMPLAINT NIGHTMARE * No reply to our message via Booking.com for 2 days. * Booking.com told us to contact the pub directly rather than them. We explained we already had. * After 6 more days, and unable to contact the pub either, Booking.com offered 20% refund (barely covers the drive-thru breakfast purchased as alternative) * We declined and messaged again. * Finally, after Instagram DMs, The Bull offered 25%. We reluctantly accepted. * We were told to wait a further 15 working days but the refund never came. No more messages were responded to by either party. And then? Nothing. Chased them again. Another eight days later, refund still missing. 2 VAT invoice requests ignored. Messages read, not answered. THEIR RESPONSE? Disgraceful. No apology for locking us out. No mention of the two men leaving and returning later. Tone suggested we declined a perfectly reasonable breakfast offer. They even had the temerity to contradict my timings by quoting the time stamp on their CCTV which showed a difference of just minutes. It always seems longer when you don't know what's going on. Indicative of their lack of respect for customers and general bad attitude. MY ADVICE? Read other reviews before booking. I wish I had. People like this give hospitality a bad name. They don't deserve to be successful. As someone with 30+ years in hospitality (including running a successful pub/B&B), I can honestly say this was the worst complaint handling I've ever seen. If you value your time, your money, or even a basic breakfast, avoid The Bull at Great Totham, Essex.

Three years on and nothing has changed. The manager was rude at every opportunity and we felt…read moreunwelcome from the minute we walked in. There was a function going on the night we went, of which we reminded multiple times, before we were ushered around the restaurant to accommodate other guests. We had small children with us who were effectively told to shut up (despite it being a supposedly family friendly restaurant) and the rest of us weren't treated any better. The only reason I did not confer a single star was thanks to the solid food served by the kitchen. The staff working there should be commended for putting up with the incompetence of their fellow employees.

We were passing through this area and came upon the pub on a Saturday lunchtime. Having a dog with…read moreus we decided to sit out on the front by the road to have a drink, but were quickly asked in and shown in to a very dog friendly room seperate from the restaurant area. We sampled some ales all first class and had an excellent meal. A very friendly and welcoming pub.

one of my two favourite pubs in the area (the other being the blue boar). a pub that dates back…read moresome 600 years set in a peaceful essex village with superb walking along the sea wall very nearby. excellent food and a superb choice of ales and wines, warm welcome and dog friendly. well worth a visit.

If you're looking for a good pub, it doesn't get much better than this…read more Lovingly called simply "The Axe" by locals, this pub is in a different league to most other rural pubs. I'll explain why and try to be concise. The cuisine is exceptional. There's a good selection of quality drinks. The service is excellent. The atmosphere is always friendly and welcoming -- the sort of place where complete strangers tend to strike-up conversation. The location is perfect, overlooking the Village Green, with a big beer garden behind, and a vast playing field behind that. It's a lovely village, nestled in the gently-undulating farming landscape of rural north-east Herts -- no wonder Braughing was recently awarded the prestigious "Village of the Year" accolade. The pub's menu always includes the best of local produce, from locally-reared beef to local pork sausages, alongside popular country pub dishes. (Braughing village is famous for, among other things, the delicious local sausages, and this is a good place to sample them.) Did I mention the pies? A different pie every day it seems, and you won't find better pies than these. I don't make a statement like that lightly.

A great, but really quaint, old English pub in the middle of nowhere. Great service and extremely…read moregood food. Very nice in the summer as the gardens are vast and overlook the countryside. Lao, if you are in the area in November, they have a fantastic firework display (arrive early, it gets packed)

What an amazing traditional pub. Views to die for, massive garden space, ample parking and the…read moremost amazing pub brimming with character. The staff are always friendly, professional and helpful. The food is always amazing quality from rolls at lunch to the best chicken pie in the evening. We turned up without a booking just wanting a summer time drink but when we asked if we could possibly have a table they managed to fit us in. During lockdown we visited several times. Everything was really professional. We felt extremely safe but none of the enjoyable experience was compromised.