The Rose and Crown

Poor Service! Insulting staff & management. Totally inexperienced & disappointing. I ordered the whole food salad & found a long hair as I took my first mouthful. Not able to attract the attention of our server, I took it back & was offered to wait for another salad. «It wouldn’t take long it was only a salad»?!? (Edward Cadge — server). When I explained that I didn’t want another salad anymore, the server & later the manager spent the time trying to convince me that the Hair I found could not have possibly come from the Rose & Crown kitchen. I asked if they thought I had planted the hair? Silence…
Instead of receiving an apology for the inconvenience, confirmation this should of not have happened, reassurance that it would not occur again, that they would speak to the kitchen & was there anything else I would like instead of the salad? Nothing! After more discussion, they confirmed they had taken the salad off the bill?!? «of course» — possibly because my experience was so bad & I hadn’t actually eaten anything.
Super frustrating. extremely poor experience. No sense of customer service whatsoever. Initiative needed with a large helping of common sense & customer service senses on full alert!
So, to the Manager — Steve Atkinson, who said he couldn’t do anything else?! please accept the award for ‘I nearly saved the company a customer’
To our server — Edward Cadge, don’t take customer service examples from your Manager…

This could have easily been a 4* but there brilliant customer service pushed it up to a 5*!
I’ve been here a few times and I think it is definitely one of the best in the area.
It is always immaculate and well presented with attention to details; even in the smallest ways.
They have a good selection of tap available and wines too. There is normally some special running too when it comes to fizzy bubbles!
The food here is of a decent standard and I would advise on getting here on time or booking at busy periods as it seems the place to go for the locals when they don’t want to cook but want decent standard food.
Due to it’s location, you will also find the random passerby stopping off for a break and a welcome rest.
The car park is a really good size, so parking is never a problem.
Their menus have a good all round selection of foods and they run specials too.
Disabled access is good — as long as you know where to go in the first place.
They make sure that they have enough staff on shift so you’re not hanging around for an age waiting to get served.
The open fires, the wing backed chairs make it perfect for a quiet evening drink when you just want to relax with a book or paper.
I always return here when I am in the area and will continue to do so as Lin as they have such great staff, relaxing atmosphere and good food to boot!

I would have to disagree with the score from the other review here.
I’ve been here numerous times, and each time I’ve been served awesome food.
I have to compliment them on their scallop dishes, as they are always great. They use very large scallops, and always combine them effortlessly with an amazing balance of flavours and textures. scallops with pork belly slices, apple purée and cinnamon sauce with pea shoots is simply incredible. scallops with crispy piquante chorizo, spring onion cooked in a meat glaze etc. All are cooked to perfection, with the scallops just flashed briefly in a searing hot pan to caramelise, but staying unctuous and falling apart fibre by fibre, as a good scallop cooked properly should do. I licked each plate at least in my mind.
Pasta dishes are presented with minimal fuss, yet packed with flavour. I had a chicken, king prawn and tomato linguine which was delicious. Very deep tomato flavour without a hint of wateriness, with shredded chicken and soft, properly cooked king prawns.
I also had their sticky duck salad, where the salad is made of ribbons of carrot, cucumber and mooli, and the duck is crispy and aromatic and folded through the ribbons with a sweet and aromatic Asian dressing with quite complex flavours. It was a healthy way to present a luxurious, less than healthy meat, and the flavours and textures balanced well.
The atmosphere is one of a busy place full of people enjoying food and banter, and the service is relaxed and attentive.
I give it a hearty recommendation as an alternative to other places in kings Langley if your looking for something more up market! I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

So, yesterday I went to a nice gastro-​pub type place in between Apsley and Kings Langley called ‘The Rose and Crown’. Pub names are so unimaginative, I know at least five hundred Rose and Crown’s. If I had a pub I’d call it ‘The Bull’s Left Testicle’. You definitely wouldn’t get it mixed up or forget the name and it’s fairly memorable. That’s marketing, that is! Anyway, in harmony with the blindingly creative name (sarcasm) it was a typical country pub inside. I do like the whole country pub vibe though, so I was happy.
I didn’t get a drink but my mate got a beer, of which I had some because SHARING IS CARING of course! I do forget how much better beer is from a tap. The menu looked good. Lots of somewhat interesting combinations of flavours and it seemed like they had made a good effort on devising a creative menu. The starters looked slightly better than the mains and we’re a bunch of rebels so we decided to get two starters and a dessert.
I ordered one pork belly with black pudding, apple fritters and lambs lettuce, and one warm fig and prosciutto ham salad with salsa verde. My food came out and I was pleasantly surprised. Neat, fine-​diningish presentation on long rectangular plates. Awesome. I hoped it tasted as good as it looked and yet again, I wasn’t disappointed. Although the apple fritters could have done with some kind of spice, they were light, crispy and golden on the outside and then when you cut into it there’s sweet steamy soft apple. That, together with the pork belly was a wonderfully classic flavour combination. By that time another friend had arrived and she pointed out that the skin wasn’t crispy as it should be, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have worked as well if it was. The soft, juicy pork with the delicately crispy fritters and the (slightly less than fresh) lambs lettuce was all the crunch I needed. The ironness of the black pudding added a welcome and completing dimension. However, there was way too much and so I left most of it. I think for a lot of people black pudding is a dangerous flavour as it kind of tastes like exactly what it is. It has to be used with caution. I, for one don’t want to be too harshly reminded that I’m basically eating a scab.
I was swapping between the pork belly and the fig and ham salad. I couldn’t decided which I liked more. The figs and ham were warm! I didn’t expect the warmness, but I loved it. It wasn’t hot, just gently warmed. I do like a warm salad. I’m gonna lay off saying ‘warm’ for a while now. This dish was a balancing act. Sweet figs, soft salty ham, tangy salsa verde, which I’ve decided I love and then there was a slightly bitter herb that had been laid over it all. I’m pretty sure it was dill. It looked like dill, but didn’t taste exactly like I know dill to taste. Hm. it was probably just dill. Either way, all together it was a mini, melt in your mouth festival on the palate. As a huge contrast, I tried some of my friend with the beer’s portobello and oyster mushroom salad on bread. It was awful. The untoasted bread absorbed any of the flavour from the already flavourless creamy sauce. The mushrooms lent an earthiness which could have been nice if it was paired with something better. It just ended up feeling like you were chewing on soggy, warm (oh dear, there’s that word again), earthy clay. Poor him.
Dessert. Sadly, this food adventure led me to the realisation that pub desserts are usually a huge disappointment. Two of us couldn’t decide between the salted caramel and chocolate in a pastry pot with Chantilly cream and the crème brûlée with red wine poached pear, so it was decided that we would get both and have half each. A very smart plan. Crème brûlées seem to come either warm (really? again?!) or cold. I prefer warm. This one was cold. They went kinda overkill with the brûlée bit and it ended up slightly burnt, which made the whole thing more bitter than it should have been. The poached pear was okay. It needed more spice. A bland effort compared to my starters. The dishes may be quite hit and miss here considering the mushroom mistake that took place earlier. I probably just lucked out with the first course. The sweet caramel, sweet pastry case, sweet chocolate and the sweet caramel sauce on the side was just a whole lot of sickly sweet with not much to temper it aside from an upsetting, teaspoon amount of Chantilly cream on the side. Not much going on flavour wise here at all. No vanilla, no cinnamon, no nothing. Just a sweet, sweet sadness.
Overall I’d give it a 6.2 out of 10, and a very vaguly enthusiastic meh.
PS: Warm.
Faraoh of Phood