The Carpenter's Arms

Definitely no longer five star!

We expected a really busy, buzzing atmosphere and were a little surprised to find the pub empty except for one other party. Yes there is a recession on; however, people, still eat and eat well, which is what we tried to do.

Despite the surreptitious and initially unexplained substitution of a green salad for a tomato and onion one, our mains were good, as was the service, albeit a little pricey relative to other gastro pubs on the one hand and high street brassieres on the other.

We declined dessert, apart from coffees and a cheeseboard. Where our main courses had certainly been if not superlative then certainly enjoyable in both qualitative and quantitative terms, unfortunately the cheeseboard was somewhat lacking, particularly in the latter quality. I remarked on this to the waitress and was told that ‘it was only for one person’; all things are relevant and doubtless this is true in some circles, but not in mine, or I believe most; one piece was thinner than a well known after dinner mint.

Before the cheese course it is quite probable that we would have made at least one return visit; on leaving and without any real discussion we were all firmly convinced that we would not be.

Quite disappointing. Booked a few days in advance and were advised that we could have our table (for 6 people) from 8.30, however our order wouldn't be taken until 9pm due to “congestion in the kitchen”. On the night it was nearing 9.45 before our order was taken, so we decided, as we'd consumed quite a lot of wine by that point and it was getting late, that we'd skip starters and head straight for mains to speed things up. After numerous prompts and requests for ETA's our mains finally arrived until 10.30pm!! The waitress was lovely and very apologetic but it is extremely irritating when we were hungry and all had the additional expense of babysitters at home. I calmly complained to our long suffering waitress however she explained that they could not offer a discount as the manager was not authorised to deduct items from the bill to compensate our delay, so they removed the service charge instead…an optional charge in the first place?!? I complained that surely it wasn't fair to penalise the waitress but the response was that this was all they could/ would do. The food was good but surely a professional kitchen charging £13-17 for mains should get thier act in order.