"First time visiting The Crown at Ampney Brook, drawn in by the location and the style based on the images from the web site. The looks and feel was amazing, unfortunately things started to unravel quickly. There was a wedding on, which we suspected when we really struggled to park, but got parked eventually. Experience tells me we should have just left, but the pictures from inside looked fantastic. We decided to go and have lunch, accepting that the service was going to be impacted. We sat down with the menus we’d been handed and there was some nice sounding found on offer. We waited and waited to give our order, we finally ordered food and then had to ask the waiter to take our drink order as they didn’t bother. We then waited and waited and waited. Eventually some water turned up. We sat chatting and had drank most of the bottle of water when our drinks turned up. After another long wait and several trips to the bathroom, our food turned up. I had ordered Venison cottage pie and my wife had order Chicken Club sandwich. The cottage pie was tasty to be fair, but had hardly any potato on top, which was disappointing, it also came with charred cabbage, which was really nice and added to the dish. The chicken club sandwich came on brioche bread, which completely took over the taste of the sandwich. This too was disappointing. Eventually our plates were cleared and eventually we we asked if we wanted pudding. We had by this pointed accepted that our lunch outting was going to take much longer than expected, we were in for the long haul. Our puddings of Chaux for my wife and sticky toffee pudding finally turned up.and they were fantastic, worth a wait but not as long as we’d had to wait. If the pudding hadn’t of been so good, I would have given 1 star overall, especially given the cost plus there was a 12.5% service charge added, which TBH, I hadn’t noticed until after we’d left I would suggest, if you are going to visit The Crown, go when there’s no wedding on and the car park is empty. My suggestion to The Crown (if they read this), don’t accept table reservations, as you can’t cope with the additional orders. Service: Dine in Meal type: Lunch Price per person: £70–80 Food: 4 Service: 2 Atmosphere: 5 Parking space: Difficult to find parking Parking options: Free parking lot"
