(This venue is in the Discount Directory)

Revisited February 2009

Any regulars will know that the Potters Heron is dear to our hearts, if you have the time to read all about its history in the first review (see below) you will know why.  We are absolutely delighted to report that since our last visit Pebbles Hotels who have already lavished the most wonderful care and attention on the interior have now got the food right!  The 4 of us enjoyed a delicious lunch but first I would like to repeat what we said back in October 2007 about the gorgeous interior........

Our starter choices were the tower of black pudding, a goats cheese brioche and 2 chose the scallops.  Our main choices roasted cod steak, rack of lamb, vegetable stir fry and beef stroganoff.  The portions were generous, well presented and the food delicious.  Favourite starter, the tower of black pudding, main, the lamb and the beef stroganoff.  We shared a hokey pokey cheesecake and a very generous cheese plate.  There is a menu on their website to get an idea of individual prices. Remember as we said earlier there is a very reasonably priced bar menu.  We had a bottle of Pinot Grigio and finished with coffees from their Caffé Torelli selection (these are available all day).

We are so delighted that we can now highly recommend Potters Heron as a wonderful venue for food whether your appetite is for a 3 course meal or a bar snack and note they are in our Discount Directory

Thank you Pebbles Hotels for making us once again proud of our heritage!

Cost £ £ £ £ £ £

Update March 2004

After the report on our last visit we were kindly invited to revisit by the management.  We accepted & are  pleased to report that things have improved .  We were warmly welcomed & the staff were friendly & attentive.  The tables were well laid up & were ready for business.  They were fairly busy & all this added to the atmosphere & appearance of the bar/restaurant area.  Our food was much better &, if you go choose roast pork, the crackling was the best I have had for ages!  Broccoli & Stilton soup also very tasty.

New rating 7/10

Visited January 2004

A very dear & lifelong friend (JI of LWL) took me here to lunch today as a birthday treat.  It was a sentimental journey for both of us, me because my father used to own the Potters Heron way back in the fifties & sixties, & for her because she spent so much time with me there.  This is where we learnt to drink !  My Father bought it in the mid fifties when it was just a thatched tea rooms & built it up to become one of the most popular restaurants & bar in the area.  He had a ballroom built on the back & it used to have a regular old style dinner & dance (with a live band!) every Saturday night, so we also learnt to dance here!  During the winter there was a company dinner dance nearly every night.  Very sadly it burnt down one very windy November night in 1966 (ironically it was the firemen's Christmas do the next night), an electrical fault, & of course, because of the wind & the thatch, the fire spread very rapidly.  My parents were very lucky to get out alive.  They escaped through their bedroom window on to the flat roof of the ballroom.  So sad for them as all their hard work building up the business was wasted.  It disheartened them so much they sold out to Brickwoods, who built the hotel on; it has been owned by a brewery or hotel chain ever since.  My sister (SM, another LWL) & I had left home by this time but we missed the place so much, it was still the hub of our social life, & we had had such happy times growing up there. (SA the 4th LWL, also through our friendship, spent many fun times here.  In fact we met aged 11 on the school bus, Route 66, that goes to Winchester past Potters Heron!)

If you have had the patience to read all the above you will understand how disappointed I was to find the bar area looking very faded & in dire need of a refurb.  A shame because the hotel area looked smart & the exterior looks lovely.  When we sat down we had to hunt for a menu, the staff were not very efficient & worst of all our starter, Combo bits & dips to share(usual mix of onion rings, mushrooms, chicken wings etc.), arrived at the same time as our main courses & they said "oh you don't mind do you?"  As it all looked rather dry & over cooked we just accepted it, we realized things were not going to get better!  The main courses were a Cajun Chicken Wrap & Fish & Chips. Didn't taste as bad as it looked but was definitely not of the standard that this establishment should be serving.  We then ordered coffees & the waitress gave us some very ordinary wrapped biscuits & said that's to make up for the food!  In fairness she was trying hard, but it was too late!

This is a prime location & must be inundated with passing trade for snack lunches, the company should do better! 

Have you gone to sleep yet?  If not, a factoid!  We were always told that the name Potters Heron evolved as there were Potters on this corner & hurn, an old English word for corner, slowly got changed to Heron, nothing to do with birds!

and this is what it looked like all those years ago!

Cost with a couple of drinks, £ £ £

Yummy Factor 5/10

Report/history lesson, CJ