The White Hart, Crawley

I don't visit this pub very often but the last visit and last night had a dodgy pint with the associated unpleasant side effects. The bar reeked of sterilising fluid so no doubt they were making an effort to keep the place clean, I think they're just a bit rubbish at looking after the ales.

31 May 2013 07:46

The Bax Castle, Horsham

Wow! What a difference the new Manager has made. The pub is looking fantastic and the food was brilliant.

The last time we visited the Bax was in February 2012 (different Manager) and we had such a mediocre meal we stayed away.

We were convinced to return in a large group (20ish) of friends and children for Sunday lunch. All of the meals were lovely and very generous portions. You could also order other meals besides roasts from the menu which was nice as some pubs are restrictive with this. There was a good selection of beers and wines and reasonably priced too.

The area next to the fireplace now has some cosy sofas (will be great in the winter) and the dining area inside looks really nice also. The car park and outside areas are being tidied up and improved. There is a children's play area and apparently plans to install tying up points for horses as the pub in on the Downs Link path.

In short, we had a very good experience and we will definitely be back!

11 May 2013 12:03

The Percy Arms, Chilworth

Oh dear, I don't think we'll be returning to this pub. I was optimistic about it despite previous bad reviews. From our experience, don't visit this place on a sunny weekend afternoon for food, the standard of service was appalling.

Admittedly we went on a Bank Holiday afternoon but I probably naively assumed that as the good weather had been forecast at least a week in advance the pub would have organised extra staff to cope with demand.

The staff behind the bar were disorganised and couldn't cope with the number of customers. The South African man behind the bar, who may have been one of the owners was just adding to the problems by sending staff away from the bar to get things when they should have been serving. The drink prices were quite high too £2.20 for a pint of lime and soda is taking the mick a bit.

We struggled to order food as they had not bothered to collect menus back in. On top of which, for food orders out in the garden they have a numbered spoon system but they had run out of spoons and were complaining that customers weren't bringing them back....hello, it's not rocket science....take the food out, bring the spoon back...a child could handle that concept.

Once we did order food (at 15:15) it took over an hour to come out. My Husband tried to chase the food up twice and the second time one of the women serving just shrugged her shoulders and said she didn't know, they just brought the food out when they were given it....no offer to go and find out where it was!

When they did bring out food, common sense would suggest that they call out the food order number so that they could take it straight to you but no, they seemed to have this odd system of wandering about the garden (whilst the food got cold) trying to peer at the numbers on the spoons, it would have been funny if we weren't so hungry.

The food when it did finally arrive was ok but nothing to rave about and certainly not worth the excessive wait. Possibly if you visited this place on a regular weekend evening and sat inside you may fair better with service. Unfortunately sat out the huge garden, there was definitely a feeling of out of sight, out of mind. It also looked as though the garden was a definite money grabbing exercise. The number of tables they had in the garden were far too many for the staff to cope with.

Unfortunately they are probably making so much money on the overpriced drinks, they owners aren't bothered about unhappy customers or training their staff in any basic standard of customer service!

11 May 2013 11:41