The Crown At Bray - Maidenhead

Today's lunch was quite disappointing. I had previously enjoyed a fantastic meal at The Crown when it was under Heston's ownership, but under the new management, the food has noticeably declined. Aside from the whitebait, nearly everything we ordered was overwhelmed by spices that masked the original flavors of the dishes. The cucumber gazpacho, while looking green, lacked any cucumber taste and was excessively acidic. The grilled plaice was dominated by the flavor of tarragon. The chutneys on the cheese board were overly peppery and spicy, and the bread was stale. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be coming back.

I was very disappointed with my lunch here, especially given that I went 8 years or so ago and it was excellent. The menu was limited particularly for vegetarians (there was only one option for mains). The food wasn't very nice as well, pretty adequate, and far too overpriced. After the meal we ordered some tea and coffee. Now, I don't claim to be much of a coffee connoisseur, however the latte was practically water, and the tea bag seemed like it had been used before as it would not diffuse in the hot water, and all flavour of it had been strained from it already.

Beautiful pub but the food was a bit hit and missed. On this particular occasion there was more misses and hits. The pork bites were savoury and sweet and very tasty with the Asian-flavoured dipping sauce. The soft shell crab salad was a soggy crab sitting in a very watery and tasteless “bisque” with a few soggy wet carrots. Not good at all. The pork ravioli was tasty. But my starter sized came with 3 raviolis but 1 of them was broken and it was just cooking liquid inside and not pork. My friend had the main course size and all 6 were fine. The most disappointing were the desserts. The bread pudding was very very dry. It was shouting out for a bit of custard. The tiny scoop of vanilla ice cream on top was not enough to moisten the dry stodgy pudding. The sticky toffee pudding was very very salty. The sponge itself was packed with salt and there was simply not enough toffee sauce to balance it. I gave up halfway through it.

Our party of 7 chose various meals although not all of them are listed on this page. All meals were very tasty, piping hot and beautifully presented. The restaurant was busy but fairly quiet as it was a Tuesday. The garden area was was lovely with conformable seating for many. Unfortunately we couldn't make use of it after our meal as it was raining when we finished our meal. Definitely a place to go back to. Great for families and they cater for dogs too, proving a number of water bowls and fresh supply of water.

Had a light lunch here. Service good very friendly staff.