The Crown

"Mixed feelings What a really hard experience to rate. On the positive side, reasonable greeting, put at a table in the”tap room” and served nice food (mostly). Now the problems Arrived 1445 (early I accept) served starter at 1500. Plate cleared 1515. Main arrived 1526, I asked for rare beef and no gravy. Main was swimming in gravy and the meat was grey. Plate rejected. New plate arrived 5 minutes later. Cleared at 1545. Waitress finally took my dessert order at 1611 and arrived at 1621. The starter was a very nice beef and mushroom roll with great flavour. The main was good meat, a little fatty but reasonable quality and nicely pink. Potatoes a bit firm, prefer them crispier. I asked for English mustard and was served a sweet pale “mousse” that was nice but was apparently whipped horseradish! The meat was good, though the knife took quite an effort to cut it as it was quite blunt. Dessert was delicious but the Tonka bean, usually a strong flavour, wasn’t that prominent. I was asked by the fifth person I interacted with how was my meal, I gave him about 20% of the above and he just grunted. “My” waitress was obviously a student not a substantive, very good at interacting with customers at the cost of expeditious serving. Toilet reasonably clean, rubbish bin needed emptying. 100 mile round trip Was it worth it, for the food yes, but wow some tweaks needed to service"