Potting Shed Pub - Malmesbury

Epic English upmarket pub with a great venue, menu and staff!

Very good food and service. Dropped a star only because of the cramped seating in the area of the pub we were positioned. I kept on getting my chair bumped into by both staff and other diners which was a little annoying.

Unfortunately this was not a good overall experience, which is a shame since it was a treat for my parents. In summary, there was a lack of consistency in floor service, the food was luke warm, average and it took a long time to arrive. The detail... There was a delay in ordering our food since we hadn 't quite decided on our mains and so the waitress decided to put the orders through together to ensure that there wasn 't too much of a gap between courses, but this is exactly what happened in any case. There was a 45 minute wait between starters and main course, we ate the main course 1.5 hours after being seated (not out of choice). We were actively offered bread by the waitress at the point of our orders being taken, after 20 mins or so the starters had arrived but still no bread. The soup starter (ordered by two of us) did not come with any bread and the crab (ordered by the other 2 people) did not come with enough bread. Since we knew bread was on the way, we enquired after the bread. We were then advised that the bread is complimentary and it 's still in the oven , with the insinuation that we should not have raised it as an issue since the bread was free. At which time, we had already delayed eating the starters so that we could make use of the bread with the meal. We then proceeded to eat slowly in the hope that we could still make use of the bread before the mains arrived at which point (because we ordered roast dinners) we would have no use for the bread, we were not offered an alternative. This contributed to the delay in receiving the mains. Constructive advice: Please don 't make a point of offering bread if it is not readily available for consumption. Serve bread with your starters or point out that the soup doesn 't come with bread and serve the complimentary bread in a timely fashion. If there is likely to be a delay between courses, offer a snack i.e. olives and manage expectations. You could also ask how a customer would like their meat cooked.

The food was delicious and the service was to a high standard. The only negative aspect was the service charge, as I would have preferred to tip voluntarily.

Our experience was good despite being told that our reservation had been cancelled although it had been made weeks before and confirmed two days before. Although we were accommodated there was no real apology.