Great Hall at The Lygon Arms

Dereck (7 August 2006)

The Death of the Lygon Arms! I stayed at the Lygon Arms last Saturday, ate in the restaurant and I have to report, it should no longer be describing itself as special in any way!. The service in the Great Hall restaurant is pythonesque and makes one yearn for re-runs of Fawlty Towers.

Low points include: the waitress forgetting the amuse bouche, running out of bread at 8:30 pm, serving cheese with a spoon and corked wine served by someone who had never met a Sommelier. This place used to be a favourite with the City for a weekend break but it just shows that restaurants are only as good as their staff. Small wonder the Michelin star is gone.

The food was adequate with pretensions of good. My starter of air dried beef and butternut squash was under prepared and over sauced, the spring chicken reasonable for a cheap provincial restaurant but again drowning in sauce. The restaurant manager though dealt the death blow being either unwilling or unable to help. A real shame my 4th and last visit to a once great weekend retreat.

Jim Fisher (23 September 2005)

You have to be a serious non-foodie to "appreciate" the servings at The Lygon Arms in Broadway.

My wife & I dined there for 3 nights on-the-trot during a recent long weekend in the Cotswolds and the only thing she can remember enjoying was a borsch terrine; while the highlight for me was a seared steak. But I can, and frequently do on a lazy Saturday night, sear a fillet steak with the best of chefs.

Avoid the gastronomique menu at all costs. It changes, so you may not be as unlucky as we were. But a sweet plum soup is not my idea of an ideal starter! In fact, it deconstructed the whole meal. The final main course of pigeon was inedible. And Blunos' (the head chef) idea of a fun 'boiled egg' dessert is sickly in the extreme and almost guaranteed to spoil any previous enjoyment, assuming there was any.

Oh yes, for £75 the wines are included but that, I suspect, is because they can't give them away. Both my wife and I rejected the champagne as well as the first 3 white wines. Awful.

Save yourself the visit - Broadway is a one-horse town after all that takes all of 15 minutes to "explore" - and go somewhere much more interesting with better restaurants, like Bath.