Peacock Inn, The

Anon (11 March 2009)

The Peacock Inn used to be a delightful place to go to, the food was brilliant and the service exceptional. However, since the new management has taken over this beautiful pub has lost its spark and nothing seems to have been done to keep up with the high standards that it used to have. We arrived as a group of seven and had previously booked a table, however, when we got there the place seemed deserted and the dining area was dark and 'creepy'. That's the only way to describe it. I thought it looked sad and was nowhere near as nice as its former days when there was a lot of light in the dining area and a very warm welcome. After about 10 minutes of chatting amongst ourselves and wondering where the staff were a gentleman finally appeared and he showed us our table. Although it was only about 7 o'clock we were the only ones in the entire restaurant; there was definitely no atmosphere and no music in the background to compensate. We sat down and it wasn't until about 15 minutes later that we were asked what we wanted to drink, by a female member of staff - presumably the main waitress and bartender. Another 10 minutes later we received our drinks which came out one at a time. The glasses were clearly not clean and I think I even recall having a lipstick stain on one of my glasses which had to be changed. Still no menus had been delivered to us at this point and about 10 minutes after this they finally delivered the menus. The menu looked very good and promising and I hoped that the food would be as good as it used to be back in the days when it was fantastic. However, there seemed to be no mention of what vegetables would be served with the meals. There was a choice however of potatoes - either chips, potato gratin, or new potatoes I think.

We ordered starters and mains and about half an hour later the starters came out - we were rather hungry by then. They were 'average' starters I would say, I had smoked salmon, which was nice but you can’t really go wrong with that. The mains however were a different story. Most of us opted for steak with different preferences. Most of them came out fairly rare even though we had ordered medium or well done - however, somehow, the steaks were hard to cut and leathery; they had also no doubt been cooked in an oven, which was odd. This, I must add, was after having to sit for 5 minutes with no knives or forks! Five of us left most of ours. The chips were okay, not nice homemade ones but obviously frozen chips so really couldn’t have gone wrong. Suffice to say, we all opted out of desserts. There were only a couple of people who arrived during our meal and I felt sad that it had gone downhill. The food obviously had the same price as the previous food, which was expensive - the steaks were around £17; the vegetables we received with them were also cold. Customers need to be aware that this is not the same Peacock Inn as it used to be and will be very disappointed if they have travelled from afar to eat such dismal food, and poor service. Not a good experience at all.

Terry Lane (24 November 2008)

We loved it. It's not very often that we manage to get away, and it's less than an hour for us to get to The Peacock Inn, but it was a very relaxing and enjoyable weekend. With Leominster and Ludlow around the corner there is plenty to do through the day. We had the choice of both master rooms - one with a four poster and the other with an absolutely beautiful roll top bath in such an old and restored ‘oak’ bathroom. The floors had been left to show the hundreds of years of traffic and the fittings were quite period too. The oak beams and arches in the room were restored and exposed, giving the whole rustic, but very clean feel. Many items of furniture in the bar were like ‘old slippers’ worn, old, but very comfy. We had a gorgeous meal; started with a homemade carrot and orange soup, followed by the best steak that I can remember eating, and I like steak. There was a nice selection of wines and real ales, which finished our meal off nicely. The members of staff were great, very friendly and helpful from the time that we arrived, and didn't keep us hanging around waiting for our orders. We were even able to check in a little earlier too. We had a beautiful selection of locally sourced food for breakfast and we were made extremely welcome. We can't wait to return, switch off our mobiles and simply......relax.

See more reviews of Peacock Inn, The