The Hind's Head Review

Purchased in 2004 by famed and multi award winning chef Heston Blumenthal, The Hind's Head in the gastronomic destination village of Bray is a renowned gastropub, situated just a few feet from Mr Blumenthal's original mothership, The Fat Duck. Having held a precious Michelin star for well over ten years, as well as three AA rosettes, I was very much looking forward to some high quality cooking (despite some rather inconsistent online reviews from regular punters) as I rocked up for lunch with my wife and two young children, on a sunny May Wednesday.

As well as a few spaces directly in front of the pub, there's a sizeable car park directly across the road from the restaurant which was much appreciated after a long drive. It's worth noting that if you're coming from the south of the village as we were, it's fairly easy to miss the car park entrance as you come around the corner of the road (we just about made it, but saw a few other cars overshoot during our visit).

Externally the place looks like a well-kept historic pub, and that theme continues inside with an old-English-pub feel including a lot of low beams (I spent a lot of time ducking), not a surprise since the building originally dates from the fifteenth century. We arrived to find no one around the entrance area, but after a few minutes a gentleman did arrive to show us through to our table in one of the main dining areas.

One thing that was clear from the off is that this is a child-friendly venue with a couple of other families already in the dining room with young children when we were seated. I would say though it was a quite a lot more raucous than I'd been expecting; kids were running around the dining room shouting, one child on another table smashed a glass on the floor, it just wasn't quite what I'd anticipated for this level of restaurant (fortunately my kids weren't tempted to join in). That said, the staff dealt with it all admirably as best they could.

On offer at lunch is a full three course carte menu and a short (but always appreciated) children's menu also. Drinks wise we weren't offered a wine or drinks list unfortunately (and with the slightly frantic initial service we didn't really get chance to ask) but I believe there's a fairly comprehensive wine selection on offer and a good range of cocktails too, including many non-alcoholic options. In the end we just stuck with lemonades and my trusty Hendrick's and tonics.

The starters arrived fairly quickly; I went for the tea smoked salmon served with pickled cucumber, sour cream and soda bread. It was tasty enough but a fairly boring 'salmon, cream and green' dish with nothing on the plate to help elevate it. My wife was equally unenthused with her dish of asparagus with a hollandaise sauce; it just didn't pack a great deal of flavour and felt like a plate fully focused on margin maximisation and ease of delivery, rather than customer satisfaction.

My daughter tried the scotch egg from the snacks section (a small quails egg) which was fine, whilst my young son was perfectly happy with a side of the famed triple cooked chips. Overall though, we were fairly disappointed with the quality of starters we received.

Would our mains be better? In short, they absolutely were, albeit they took a long time to come out especially given the fact the venue was far from full. My oxtail and kidney pudding packed a lot of flavour, and my side of bay buttered carrots (our waiter had advised I ordered a side) was very good also. My wife too thoroughly enjoyed her 'petit sale' of duck with a green coffee sauce which was a delicious plate.

My daughter went for another famed dish here; the triple cooked chips and fish. The fish was very tasty with a lovely sweet batter, the chips were excellent and all the accompanying sauces were without fault also. The only thing that would have helped here is if they offered a half portion of this for kids, as the portion size was way too big for a thirteen year old.

After some impressive mains, there was little chance of us leaving without dessert, but unfortunately these brought us back down to earth. My wife and daughter went for the strawberry Eton mess. It was tasty enough, but really lacked the technical precision you'd normally expect with 1* dessert and some elements, such as the strawberry sorbet, didn't pack as much flavour as they should have done for me.

For my young son, 'A Visit to the Ice Cream Parlour' from the children's menu sounded absolutely magical, but turned out to be a shambolic experience. Firstly he was only taken upstairs (my wife went with him) after all the other desserts had been delivered. On arrival in 'The Parlour', it's basically just a bar area where the child sits on a bar stool to choose some ice cream, but the freezer with all the ice cream flavours in had been turned off so they had all melted; it was all pretty amateurish to be honest. A chef did then appear with some vanilla ice cream from the kitchen which my son was very happy with, and he did enjoy adding his toppings, but for this level of restaurant those basic errors were unexpected.

For my dessert, I selected the intriguingly named 'Perfectly Imperfect Sweetshop'. Our waiter explained that sometimes chocolates made next door for The Fat Duck menu don't make the cut due to minor imperfections, so are reused here for this dessert. Given it was in the middle of the other desserts on the menu and the most expensive dessert listed (at a whopping eighteen pounds), I was expecting something fairly impressive here. Well, imagine my surprise when all I was served was a plastic bag with loose chocolates in.

I genuinely couldn't believe it; by all means I'd have no issue if they sold these imperfect petit fours (which is basically what they are) alongside coffee or even as an extra takeaway item at the end of the menu, but to list a bag of petit fours as a genuine full dessert (especially given the price) I found massively disingenuous. About a week after our visit the restaurant posted on Instagram they now convert these petit fours into a chocolate slab based dessert; maybe the look of shock on my face prompted that decision, but it was all too late for my visit unfortunately!

And so, as we collected our bill (complete with 12.5% service charge) a largely enjoyable but fairly frustrating lunch came to an end. Overall we did enjoy our visit, but much of the food (particularly the starters and desserts) showed a worrying amount of complacency for me and just weren't at the level I'd hoped. Service too was less than stellar; the gentleman who served us was very personable, but the pacing was slow and even our second drinks order took an unfathomable age to arrive (albeit this was acknowledged and apologised for).

There's also a tourist-trap-esq lack of value here; even with some of ordered items for my young son being deducted from the bill (as part of a half term promotion) I felt the meal was too expensive for the standard delivered. I wish the team all the best moving forwards and I've no doubt the Heston Blumenthal connection will ensure this continues to be a popular venue, but I personally don't anticipate returning here anytime soon.