Fox & Raven

The food here used to be great and you really want it to be as it’s such a lively setting, especially on warm days.
Unfortunately in the last couple of years the food has deteriorated significantly to the point that we now won’t go back and our last two visits were a year apart.
Invariably the food is over or undercooked, chips that look tired and dried out and just generally substandard. Such a shame!

We ate in your pub about four years ago and i must say that we had a wonderful experience: good food, good service and a reasonable price .
We went again last year, and off a table of five, three of us were not happy .
We gave it another try this afternoon, and we were again desillusioned: the antipasti was ok, the salmon
just about, the rump steak rather small and overcooked, and the cod ridiculously small for its value. The two
chocolate tortes were about two bites, and the cream seemed more like milk .And i must say the cider is not first class either.
The all thing was certainly not worst the fifty four pounds you, ve asked.
One good thing: the waitress was charming and very amiable.
Sorry, but we wont be coming back.

We
had an awful experience here some years ago and against my own wishes, had to go
back here for a meal after a charity ride.
They are at least consistent with
your ever growing disappointment. Not enough staff, who really are very nice,
that just seem to be embarrassed by the food they are bringing you. Took over an
hour for the food to come and about about 45 mins for the drinks. After being
ignored for the first 30 mins I should have followed my gut instinct and left
but the kids were hungry. When the food turned up burnt, cold and soggy I knew
it had all been a mistake. It looked like the type of food I’d expect to get
served in a prison.
I
had expected the worst and they didn’t fail to provide. The deserts are ok, but
then they just have to get them out the fridge/​freezer.
Save
yourself the disappointment and don’t ask for French mustard, they only have
Dijon!
If these places paid staff just enough to care a little about what they were doing then it would be a great place to go. I would have asked to speak to the manager but I can’t imagine ti would have done any good.

Nice pub, great real fire, good choice of beers, Ale, wine etc
Nice place for a few drinks in the beer garden which overlooks fields
Not eaten here but the food smells nice :)

Pretty setting but the service was very slow, and my food, when it arrived, was burnt.

I really wanted to like you Fox & Raven. Your quaint, rural location; your country-​like, homey interior; your seemingly varied and inspired menu… all the factors were there.
We found a seat and went to order at the bar. You told us there would be AT LEAST a 30-​minute wait. All right, that must mean the food is good, right?
Oh, how wrong I was.
While all the Sunday roast plates coming out to nearby diners looked to be of excellent quality (if the diners’ eager consumption of the food is any indication of its tastiness), Robert D said his Gammon and Eggs were average at best. And me? Me, I had the most, er, inventive Cobb Salad in the whole of East Anglia. You see, the Warm Seafood Cobb Salad that I ordered was none of these things. Except, maybe, the seafood bit. If you’d call it that. Let me explain to you, Fox & Raven, the horrors of what your kitchen served me up today.
A small bowl of salad ingredients with vinaigrette dressing. No egg. No avocado. No roquefort cheese. Hell, no cheese whatsoever. This small bowl of garden salad with vinaigrette dressing arrived on a larger plate with some small bites of seafood. None of which were hot, as the menu led me to believe.
First, I had a bite-​sized piece of lukewarm smoked salmon. Next to this was an unidentifiable mixture of something I can only imagine contained what you called lobster, yet all I got was a mouthful of coriander leaves. Next to the coriander-​mayonnaise-​lobster mixture was some mackerel, lukewarm like the smoked salmon. As the supermarket vacuum-​packed fish connoisseur that I am, I’d say it came from Tesco; at least it was pepper-​encrusted. Classy. Let’s see. Next to the not-​completely-​deboned-​Tesco mackerel, I had, oh yes, my favourite… small VEINED shrimps swimming in some generic Thousand Island dressing. Appetising.
mmm mm.
Questionable seafood aside, on what planet is this called a Cobb Salad, Fox & Raven? Because aside from the iceberg lettuce and tomato in the vinaigrette side salad I got, none of that was even remotely Cobb-​like.
I’m sure you do lovely roast dinners, and that’s fine. But stick to what you know, and don’t put things on your menu that sound delicious and then stick a bunch of crap on a plate and call it a Cobb Salad when someone orders anything that doesn’t involve meat, potatoes, yorkshire pudding, and veg.
Oh yeah, and your service was a bit crap, and your desserts certainly left something to be desired. I know I ate my Eve’s pudding with seeming abandon, but this was a direct result of all the time I spent waiting and not eating.

Nice pub in Chelmer Village. Food as expected :-) but the service was absolutely dire. Especially as the pub was not very busy. One to avoid if you like service any faster than 45 minutes to even take your order.

This pub has a very good reputation for Sunday lunches.
It is always very busy and the food is popular. If you are taking children make sure you take your own boaster seat just in case, as when we went all the highchairs were in use (the only have 2 or3) and it was a pain — hence the rating.
The toilets were clean and the prices were reasonable. The sunday lunch was large, but I didnt really enjoy it. The gravy was not hot enough and very thin and the plates were big but the portions were not.
However eating during the week, I have found the food to be far superior. Worth a chance!