Visited June 2007

Two of us chose to dine at this the oldest pub in the New Forest one Saturday evening.  The premises has moved away from the traditional pub format and is now more of an up market restaurant, tastefully decorated with enough space between the tables.  It has it’s own car park to the side of the building, but wheelchair access may be difficult due to the old design.

I started with Scallops in pancetta with a Salsify and Truffle sauce which was very nice.  My fellow diner asked if they had any Smoked Salmon (which was not on the menu), they served him some whiskey marinated Smoked Salmon which was also very good.

For our main courses we chose the fish of the day which was Sea Bass whilst I had the Saddle of New Forest Venison, both came with a small amount of vegetables (just 5 chips with the venison!).  We were disappointed to see that bread and any more vegetables would be charged as extras.

To accompany our meal we had one bottle of Pinot and our final bill for two diners came to just over £75.  Although we were impressed by the quality and presentation of the meal we felt that the portions were very small (this was also the opinion of a couple of other diners we spoke to afterwards) and could not see how they justified their prices, £17.95 for the Venison!