jhr
Well-Known Member
The Master Builder, Buckler\'s Hard
Several people have asked what the newly re-opened Master Builder is like. We ate in the Pub yesterday and these are my conclusions,
The decor is similar to before and the only real changes they've made are to remove the servery in the lower Bar area and to replace the Beken photos on the walls with a load of prints (a pity, imho)
The beer seems OK - Guinness, Pedigree and Ringwood 49er on draft plus loads of cold, fizzy stuff. The Pedigree was in good nick but I can't vouch for the rest. You still have to queue for hours to buy a drink or order food when they're busy, as they were yesterday. According to the website they're still advertising for a Bar Manager and this could be the problem, as it didn't exactly seem a well-oiled machine. In fairness, they've only been open for a week.
The food was..... OK, I suppose. Mrs jhr said that her pollack and chips was nice and fresh, and the kids had sausages and chips (they were ecstatic because the MB never used to serve chips) which looked all right, but nothing special. I had salmon fishcake, which was stodgy, thick and, consequently, cold in the middle. Mrs jhr's wine arrived in a glass with someone else's lipstick on it. We didn't have any puddings, partly because I asked to open a tab when we ordered our main courses, to be told "we don't really do tabs" /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif.
So; on first impressions, not much better than before, in my view. I don't know what the restaurant is like but I hope it's improved. In fairness, I ought to give them some time to bed it all in, so we'll try again in a few weeks time. At the moment, however, it's still "could do better" in my view. A pity, because I really wanted it to be an improvement on the old regime, and it wouldn't have been difficult /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif.
Several people have asked what the newly re-opened Master Builder is like. We ate in the Pub yesterday and these are my conclusions,
The decor is similar to before and the only real changes they've made are to remove the servery in the lower Bar area and to replace the Beken photos on the walls with a load of prints (a pity, imho)
The beer seems OK - Guinness, Pedigree and Ringwood 49er on draft plus loads of cold, fizzy stuff. The Pedigree was in good nick but I can't vouch for the rest. You still have to queue for hours to buy a drink or order food when they're busy, as they were yesterday. According to the website they're still advertising for a Bar Manager and this could be the problem, as it didn't exactly seem a well-oiled machine. In fairness, they've only been open for a week.
The food was..... OK, I suppose. Mrs jhr said that her pollack and chips was nice and fresh, and the kids had sausages and chips (they were ecstatic because the MB never used to serve chips) which looked all right, but nothing special. I had salmon fishcake, which was stodgy, thick and, consequently, cold in the middle. Mrs jhr's wine arrived in a glass with someone else's lipstick on it. We didn't have any puddings, partly because I asked to open a tab when we ordered our main courses, to be told "we don't really do tabs" /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif.
So; on first impressions, not much better than before, in my view. I don't know what the restaurant is like but I hope it's improved. In fairness, I ought to give them some time to bed it all in, so we'll try again in a few weeks time. At the moment, however, it's still "could do better" in my view. A pity, because I really wanted it to be an improvement on the old regime, and it wouldn't have been difficult /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif.
