White Horse, Richmondback to pub details please note - reviews on this site are purely the opinion of site visitors, so don't take them too seriously.
We used to visit this pub frequently, before it took a dive, some 2 years ago, when it was fabulous, atmospheric, cosy, personal & serving great food from a varied list on displayed on chalk boards. Since the recent refurbishment, myself & my girlfriend have walked in twice, purely to see how the pub is doing, whether its busy etc, initially we were impressed apart from feeling that you have walked into a kindergarten with such young staff.
Recently we were looking for a ‘family’ style pub that could help with a family meal for 4 adults & 3 children (previously we have frequented The White Horse, Pizza Express [both Richmond] & Harts Boat Yard [Kingston]) so we thought we would give The Marlborough another chance. I therefore reserved a table for a meal. When we arrived bang on opening time of midday, we were shown to the table by the manager, who recognised my name from the booking (overall this is a 5/10). Then it started to slowly go down hill . . .
The young waitress, although polite was just running on full power, having sat for a while at the table, she approached and said ‘Are you here for a meal? Would you like a menu?’. Now I would have expected the menu’s to already be on the table, the manager - when seating us to hand us a menu, or once we were seated, the menu’s to immediately arrive. But not to wait & then ask are we here for a meal. To me, it shows inexperience & a lack of management.
The menus are by far, way smaller & less varied than the pub in its previous guise. The menu is run of the meal food, that a small, less experienced kitchen can turn out without problems (main courses of: -Roast Beef, Sausage+Mash+Red Onions+gravy, Roast Chicken, Risotto, Char-Grilled Sirloin Steak, Salmon).
The same waitress appeared for our order – Roast beef, Grilled Sausage + Mash for 2 Adults & 3 Children & a char-grilled sirloin steak. We specifically asked the waitress, that all 3 children’s meals did not come with the red onions – as they disliked them, she acknowledged this. Shortly the waitress returned to say that the BBQ was not yet ready so the char-grilled steak was not an option. Unfortunately she had not taken the order correctly, as the char-grilled steak was off the main menu and not off the BBQ. This can not have been a simple mistake, as there is no char-grilled sirloin steak+chips+ mushrooms on the BBQ menu, it was simply a ‘failing to listen’ mistake.
On the plus side, the food arrived altogether, hot and well presented however, all 3 children’s Sausage meals came with Red Onions even though we had specifically asked not have them. It was felt by all that the food was nothing special.
We requested the menus for the dessert order and it only consisted of a paltry 3 choices, which were some form of pie, ice cream & a cheese board. We were informed that due to a rather busy Saturday (yesterday) that they only had the pie & the cheeseboard available, so no ice-cream for the kids and no other alternative options. This measly dessert menu & the no ice-cream we thought was very disappointing, so we didn’t order anything, we just paid up and left. We couldn’t believe that the kitchen management had not made the effort to go to Sainsbury’s, Tesco’s, Waitrose or M&S food to but some form of ice-cream which they could have served up, bearing in mind the pub did not open till midday (food supermarkets open at 10 – 10.30 am on Sundays). We left at approximately 1.30pm by which time the formal seating area within the pub & the seating area underneath the pagoda on the terrace were full with families. I am not sure how well this pub would have coped with so many families and children.
This is clearly a pub that will never be what it was. It may be succesful in luring in local families throughout a weekend, so as to allow the children to roam the rear garden & climbing frame whilst parents chat & read the papers, but we certainly will not be revisiting with or without are family & grandparents. The White Horse, Worple Way, Richmond is far superior in many many ways. My main gripe is that with a pub of such stature, it does not feel right being served by staff that are so young, lacking in maturity, and fail to have the common sense and experience in dealing with customers.
By the way the menu displayed via the website www.themarlboroughrichmond.co.uk/menu is not identical to that on offer – beware! Overall 5/10.
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I love this Pub, easy to relax and enjoy a few drinks or a lovely dinner. 10/10 Recommendation for this Pub, staff are friendly and you always get a smile and good service. Don't agree with theoneandonlyjoe's comments, never had a problem with big groups and outside furniture.
tmp11 - 22 Jun 2008 22:35 |
I'm not a huge fan of gastropubs (for a young guy I'm a bit of a traditionalist if you want to eat a good meal go to a restaurant a pubs for drinking) but this place does it very well. The food is good and the beer is nice. In general the staff are really friendly however I and a very large group of friends were in there one summer and so moved some of the tables and chairs in the garden around so we could sit together. One of the staff came out and demanded we move them back as not asking permission 'wasn't cricket' and that he probably would have let us if we'd asked first. This seemed bizarre to me as we weren't doing any harm or blocking anything in the garden and if it was ok to do something like that but you just needed to ask permission first then perhaps a calm, slight rebuke would have been better than an angry and condescending snap. They also lost themselves quite a bit of money as there were over twenty of us and were about to order food but decided to go somewhere else after that.
Having said that it was just a one off and when we've been in with smaller groups they seemed very friendly. Maybe they have a thing against big groups?
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I found this a great place to eat. It has that gastroub relaxed feel with good quality food. Recommend.
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Visited late yesterday evening - seemed to have more of a pubby feel because they had stopped serving food for the evening
2 guest beers on - Adnams and Rev James. The friendly barman voluntarily gave me a sample of the latter. Told me they had London Porter on last week.
If only they could do something about the noise - as other people have commented, the wooden floors dont help - I could consider coming more frequently
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A great gatsro pub deserving of recent publicity, great food served by knowlegable and helpful staff. Beers and dinks of good quality with interesting wines. Perfect place on a quiet saturday afternoon to relax
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Hot landlady !!
anonymous - 18 Jul 2007 22:27 |
Agree with KatrinaD, although the garden is lovely if it's a sunny day. Buy some carpets and it would be lovely.
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For me too clinical, overated and trys a bit too hard - can never feel relaxed in the place with all that wood and high ceiling noise. Sorry
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'JB' this is a place for eaters...!
Behold, the 'White Horse' gets a mention this week in The Times "Gastro Pubs 2007" ! You can get a 2-course gastro lunch here (Mon,Tues,Wed) for £15.00. Or an evening gastro meal on the same first three days of the week. What do we do for the rest of the week..? Have to pop down the hill to the 'Orange Horse' by the station, for a nose-bag..!! Hey, hay! TJ
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Great pub for food, great sunday roast, nice chilled out atmos, not too many kids. recommend.
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I have heard good reports about the White Horse, in Richmond, recently. Apparently the food IS good!
I'll try it, and let you know soon..!
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The White Horse, if you don't know it, is right behind the Red Cow, on the main road out of Richmond going towards Sheen/Putney. (Its not far from the Black Horse (now closed) and nowhere near the Grey Horse which I quite like in Sunbury, or the Spotted Horse in Putney High Street! But no doubt, they may be related)!! TJ
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Fullers "Pub and Eating House" , now much more eating house than pub. Basically its an upmarket gastro pub. The absence of any soft furnishings - there's wooden floors and chairs throughout - mean that it's inevitably very noisy and, whilst accepting that I'm not a gastropub person, I dont think I would want to eat with so much background noise always
Nice outside seating area - but this is not a place for drinkers
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Good food, nice and gentrified, great Fullers beers. Outrageously expensive but would be completely different if it was cheap. Nice because next door is The Red Cow which is the complete opposite.
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Padlock to kids playground removed :-)
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Now that they're letting kids in again, the smoke situation is better (little extraction) but service is still patchy and relatively slow.
Nevertheless, I've added it as a top favourite on my blog:
http://richmondtransits.blogspot.com/
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Thought I would bring a few friends here for lunch in the Summer - it ruined everybody's Sunday! Ordered food, waited 25 mins and got a starter. Waited another 45 mins for NO main course (funny how the table that came in after us had all been served). We were assured that the food would arrive in the next 10 mins. 15 mins later and still no food. 20 mins later and still no food. No apology either. Said that we were going to leave and then the food arrived. It was stone cold! We all left (I was pretty embarassed, the others were just starving). Can't believe we only got a half-hearted 'sorry', they made us pay for the drinks we'd had to buy because of the long wait and still didn't get an explanation. I'm hoping they'd just had a bad day and I want to come back and be pleasantly suprised. Just really unacceptable service and bad management on that occasion though. It can really put you off.
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This is one of my locals. In my opinion the quality of food has gone down. They used to have a different menu every day. Now it is a standard menu. I haven't eaten in there for over a year.
They never seem to have ESB on tap. The atmosphere is generally fairly smokey and noisy due to the lack of soft furnishings.
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A great place to go for great pub grub and drinks. Only downside is that the place can be over run by children which spoils things, especially if you want to have a lazy afternoon drink.
Cat_a - 29 Apr 2005 16:28 |
They've removed signs prohibiting little persons (good) but the door to the playground is still locked (bad): a shame, since this pub is strategically placed as you can supervise your offpring on the next door playground while having a pint and a bite.
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Have Fullers got this pub back again, does anyone know ? The pub has the Griffin sign outside again and only serves Fullers beers, but there is no mention of this pub on the Fullers Website
It has that rather impersonal feel that many Richmond pubs have, but the beer has been quite good on my recent visits and the service is better than average
Is this a pub that does food, or a restaurant with a drinks licence ? - not sure that it knows what its customer base is.
Food seems pricey for what is basically a pub environment and it seems quite smokey, because of the low ceilings.
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A Shame but gone downhill in my opinion, used to be a fave of mine but now not a patch on the White Swan for food or other pubs up the hill
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Used to be great but not accepting kids anymore -why a discriminate? Are people like "Si" (below) so old they don't remember being children?
Otherwise good foreign beers on draft, good food.
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Nice pub, slightly on the expensive side, and ideal in the summer for watching the ladies walk by in the large beer garden (with its own bar). The upstairs is nice and breezy and downstairs is traditional and homely. Let's hope it isn't gutted anytime soon in an attempt to attract the younger drinker. Suited more to a drink during the daytime in my mind, but hey, that's just me! Food is good, if not outstanding, but a little on the dear side considering it's on a hot plate.
Mr Tall - 8 Nov 2004 00:08 |
Overpriced big style, and the beer is not great- lot better pubs in town (food is quite good though)!
Tom - 15 Feb 2004 23:12 |
have been here regularly on thursdays - good for catching uo with old mates room to drink, decent beer and attractive barmaids.
BurnleyWLS - 24 Dec 2003 13:12 |
Si is spot on. Can be okay on a Friday evening although you get the impression they are more interested in the people buying food rather than just sat there drinking.
Good for: food
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All the makings of a gastropub, for better or worse... Beware screaming Surrey offspring at the weekend though.
Si - 13 Aug 2003 14:35 |
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