The Bell Inn

Great food and decent price! We just stopped here on our way home and had amazing service and food.

I’ve been to this pub and restaurant numerous times over the last 30+ years. It’s fabulous. Great food and lovely location. I now live in America but try to visit on each of my trips back to the UK. My favourite.

Stylish pub/​restaurant with a relaxed, laid-​back ambience, friendly staff and decent sounds emitting from the speakers. The spacious restaurant area unites the two smaller bars, and forms a central spot where families and large parties gather. Bar seating is cosy, modern and inviting and provides the sort of place you are more than happy to chill in for a few hours on a mid-​week night. There is also ample parking.

I had eaten at the Bell during Sunday lunch a few months ago and at that time found the food and service pretty good. So thought I’d book a table for the evening and expected the same standard as previously experienced. How disappointing. The place was buzzing, but it would have been nice if the food and service was as interesting!
MY company and I ordered a bottle of Champagne and were asked if we wanted to drink it straight away — as we already had drinks we said we would waitour waitress seemed rather perturbed that an ice bucket was required (shouldn’t Champagne or white wine for that matter always come with an ice bucket? Call me old fashioned!!). The scallops were ordered — they looked edible and by all accounts were ok. Unfortunately I’d drawn the short straw and had ordered the Chicken parfait — it was a slab which appeared almost a foot in dimension — rather vulgar and for only one person, far too much for any ones appetite.
Needless to say most of my first course was left to provide space for the main — I had high hopes that my grilled salmon and my friends steak would be worth waiting for. (I should add here that although the place was heaving, we didn’t have to wait very long between courses at all. perhaps this was one of the faults of the food — I’m sure I’ve waited longer in a fast food chain).
Our main courses arrived. Where my chicken parfait took up most of the plate, I can’t say the same for my Salmon, dry and anaemic chips and shrivelled watercress. The Salmon was well and truly singed — the best thing about it was the ‘crispy’ skin. My green salad was substituted for a caesarand the request for the green salad took three requests with three separate waitresses. My husband endured similar confusion over his onion relish, brandy and pepper corn sauce and a red and yellow salsa. When asked after the missing onion relish, he was informed that the salsa was it.
Thank goodness for the ice bucket — at least the Champagne stayed chilled and it certainly helped with our moodthe faults were stacking up.
We decided to give the desserts a go. surely our luck would improve at this stage. My Tirimasu which was part of the specials was certainly special, but for all the wrong reasons. It balanced in vulgarity with the chicken parfait I had been presented with earlier — A huge plop of slop (it’s taste resembling something like the well known Italian dessert) — but the appearance was sickening, virtually sickening and then covered with chocolate sauce?
Needless to say we won’t be going back in a hurry and we won’t be singing it’s praises to friends and family. Perhaps the Bell has started to sit on it’s laurels — but it might be time to take stock and realise that getting customers in and out of the door as quickly as possible should be left to the professionals, i.e. Burger King and McDonalds.