"We arrived on Friday evening at about 7.15 pm hoping for dinner. We were immediately greeted by the young lady behind the bar, who said that of course we could have dinner. Actually, it became obvious that there was no problem as there wasn 't anybody else in the dining section. When we commented on the lack of diners, she rather strangely said that there were usually more customers for dinner during the week than the weekends. We wondered why? There is a good pub menu and I went for the haddock pie and he decided on bangers and mash. The dining section is quirkily decorated, which is rather nice, but there does not appear to be any heating, and we were a bit chilly. The food looked good on arrival, and the chef obviously knows how to do things properly, in that there was hard boiled egg in the fish pie and the bangers came with an extra small jug of gravy. I was hoping for a lovely creamy fish pie with real mashed potatoes and fresh veg, and he was hoping for lovely sausages and real mashed potatoes. But the pie was really very dry and not very taseful, and although his sausages were delicious (locally sourced) we both thought that the mash was probably smash i.e. out of a packet. Since we had not much enjoyed the main course, we thought we would try puddings, and I ordered the sticky toffee pudding and he had apple crumble. His crumble was good, and the sticky toffee sauce was OK, but poured over a very ordinary piece of sponge. The wine per glass is very reasonably priced which is perhaps why there is nothing very special about it. There have been other reviews praising the food, but we were disappointed. . Some parts of the evening were good, but other parts were definitely not hence my title. If the food had not been so dry, we would have added another star."
