The Star Inn - Basingstoke and Deane

We have been coming here for the past 4 years or so.

Really disappointedHave been away for 3 years and used to pop in to the Star oftenToday I went back for lunch.

Roadside country pub popular with good ales, decent food and always something going on. It's owned by Mitchell

We waited a very long time to be served between courses, and to originally take our orders. The food itself was not anything special, I had fish and chips, which was flavorless. Me and my boyfriend shared baked Camembert as a starter but there was not enough bread to go with the cheese, meaning half of it was left. However, my friend had the lamb shank, which he found enjoyable.

We have visited this pub on many occasions and never had any problems but this time it all seemed to go pear shaped. It took ages for the orders to be taken. There were 7 on our table and when the starters came we were 2 short. We had to chase them up. By the time they came the others had more or less finished theirs. The main course equally took a long time to come. Two medium steaks looked like they had been crusified! I don't know whether the staff were aware of this or whether they overheard our comments but they arrived with two more steaks that were medium. In fairness our waiter was very apologetic about the whole scenario and the management didn't charge us for the two late starters. We had 3 bottles of wine throughout the evening, mostly because of the long wait between courses and the management also did not charge us for one of them. All in all a disappointing evening at The Star but we would still go back as it is a half way point between us and our friends and we've never had a bad meal before. Let's hope it was just a blip.