"What should have been a lovely family evening celebrating my dad’s 79th birthday was actually really disappointing. I made a booking several weeks in advance for 10 people at 7.30pm for Saturday 30th March. It would be my first time visiting The Fox and Duck and I was really looking forward to it. Sadly it didn’t live up to expectations, a friend had been for a meal recently and warned me they had waited ages, I should have listened. We arrived on time to be told our table wasn’t ready and we should get drinks at the bar. The bar area is not large with only a couple of seats, with 10 people in our party we felt like we were constantly in the way of people coming and going. After waiting 15 minutes I asked about our table, the member of staff wasn’t apologetic for the delay and told us it would be ready shortly and that it was just being laid. Once we had sat down we waited a further 40 minutes for a member of staff to take our orders, it’s now 8.30pm, over an hour after we’d arrived. One of our party ordered a starter of soup, everyone else just ordered mains. The one soup starter took over 15 minutes to arrive! At 9o’clock 1.5hrs after arriving I went to the bar as other than the one starter we had not received any food, not even a bread roll. The member of staff said she would check what was happening. The manager came over and wasn’t apologetic, he told us it was because someone had ordered a starter which held everything up, he said it takes 15 minutes to heat up soup (I doubt that very much). I found the managers attitude extremely rude, like it was our fault we had been waiting so long. When my mum tried to challenge him about it he rudely walked off shaking his head rather than apologising for the delays. When the food arrived it was distinctly average, not what you’d expect for what they are charging for some of their dishes. My son and husband ordered the “Foxy burger” hoping for a delicious, juicy, meaty burger with cheese in a toasted burger bun. Unfortunately what they received can only be described as a burger patty sandwich which came in an anemic under cooked ciabatta bread roll. Who serves a burger in ciabatta bread?! This was not mentioned on the menu. I didn’t complain at the table as I didn’t want to ruin our evening anymore than it already had been, if we’d started sending food back we would have died of starvation. The bill left a final bitter taste in my mouth at £320.00 I’ve eaten better food for a lot less, we will definitely not be returning."
