Walnut Tree Inn

Paige was our server and she did a wonderful job of making our party of six feel welcome.
After sampling our shared starter of baked Camembert we enjoyed char-​grilled pork, sea bass, steak and ale pie, chicken curry with veggies and fries. It being Shrove Tuesday, we had pancakes for dessert.
This is the place to go if you fancy pub fare or a restaurant quality meal.

Well known pub/​restaurant for several miles around. We went, on recommendation from a friend, but I’m afraid it didn’t suit us. To be honest I thought it was a bit pricey! Others dining there seemed to happy, though.

This is an amazing place to eat in the summer as the garden is huge and the views beautiful. The interior is just as good but if you can, try and sit outside. The staff and owners are really friendly and great at making you feel welcome.
Plenty of real ales and wines on offer to go with your meal. The menu changes with the seasons and is very dependant on what the chefs can source locally. I can highly recommend the roast chicken & chorizo salad as a starter, the flavours go so well together! For a main, I had the spicy beef stroganoff which was also really impressive.

The Walnut Tree is a large and spacious country-​style pub next to the main road junction in the village of Runcton, a few miles south of Chichester. It’s very popular at week-​ends (especially Sunday lunch) and in the evenings.
The original pub building has been much extended, and has several interconnected rooms, all decorated in a rustic style with bits of rural memorabilia. It also has a very pleasant and spacious beer garden, with a patio area and lawns shaded by mature trees, with lots of tables for outdoor eating and drinking. It’s rather close to the roundabout, but this didn’t spoil our visit (but, then, I had an excellent view of various motorbikes going past).
It serves up to three real ales on handpump, and while the choices (Courage Best, Fuller’s London pride and Adnam’s Bitter) on our visit were not the most adventurous, they were decently kept. The pub is well known for its food: there is an extensive menu, ranging from pub fare such as baguettes, baked potatoes and ploughman’s lunches, through to a substantial restaurant-​style lunch and dinner menu. Vegetarians are also well catered for.
The pub fare comes in the £5-£7 bracket, whereas a three-​course meal with wine and service would (depending on your choices) set you back £35 a head and upwards. As we were there for lunch, we had the former, and some of our companions just opted for main course dishes. The food was perfectly good if unspectacular, with generous portions. (I was particularly pleased to have a decent slab of cheddar on my ploughmans).
The pub itself has some history: it dates back to the early-​19^th century, and was originally on the banks of the Chichester-​Ford section of the Portsmouth and Arundel Canal (the pub was used by the navvies who built the canal — it’s rather more upmarket now). The Canal had a short working life and was defunct by the mid 1800s, with only a depression at one end of the garden to show it ever passed by here.
There’s a large car park and adjacent to stops on the 60 bus route from Bognor to Chichester: this runs (Mon-​Sat) every 30 minutes during the day, and hourly in the evenings until around 23h, and hourly until around 18h on Sundays. It’s about ten minutes from Chichester bus station and 25 minutes from Bognor Railway station.