Unfortunately the place has changed, now being run by a Damien Grundy, and the South African-theme has sadly gone. The food is now normal fairly conventional pub grub. I could forgive it that, but at the same time the quality has dropped like a stone. I suppose the positive news is the prices are down, but then the quality is too, so I don’t count that a win! Starters range from £1.50 to £4.95 and include Cajun whitebait, olives, pâté, soup, onion rings and Ardennes coarse pâté. The mains on the standard menu go from homemade steak burger or steak rag pudding at £7.95 though homemade Cheese & Onion Pie at £8.50 to Salmon with a herb crust at £10.95. The Specials board had quite a lot of fish dishes on it, which is probably encouraging, but included smoked haddock lasagne which I’m not sure about. There are fillet, sirloin and rump steaks too, ranging from £10.95 to £14.95. Between us we tried the Cheese & Onion Pie(£8.50), which was apparently quite nice; Trio of the Ocean(£7.95) which was OK, Sirloin Steak(£11.95) which was also severely overcooked and looked like Rump. I unfortunately chose the Mixed Grill(£13.75) which was(from memory) kidney, liver, sausage, chop, gammon and steak: it was consistently very poor. Several of the meats tasted a bit off and all of it had been cremated and the salad on plate was a very sad affair with limp leaves and no dressing. Also of note were the chips, which appeared to be baked potatoes that had been cooked into huge chips and very briefly fried so they were warmed through, but had no real texture. Given we were the only people in the restaurant, the service was very slow: but since we were being served by the only barmaid from the pub bit, what can you expect? This review is based on a single visit, so I may have caught them on a bad night and by all means someone correct me if that is the case, but I won’t be going back any time soon to see if I was unlucky
