Red Lion

The Red Lion is probably one of the better dining options if one is looking for good value in and around Blackpool. This is a restaurant connected to the Premier Inn in Bispham. It is away from the nastiness in Central Blackpool, so the atmosphere is sedate; I think this is a place where one can take one’s grandmother for dinner.
Based on experiences in previous years, we have found the service here to be consistenly good and the quality of the food to be consistently okay (not great, not good, but okay, which is good enough for us). We therefore visited this place twice during our recent trip to the Blackpool area this past April.
Our first visit happened on a Sunday evening. The host seated us right away and was attentive, and our server was friendly and efficient. We had the Sunday Roast dinner special, which is a great value at GBP 7.99. Hubby and I both ordered the roast chicken, which we both thought was cooked perfectly. The chicken was tender and juicy, and the portion was quite generous. The vegetables were nicely steamed (i.e. still crisp and not fall-​apart mushy) and the yorskshire pudding was quite tasty (i.e. big, fluffy, and not greasy).
Since we generally find the dining choices in Blackpool quite dire, we returned to the Red Lion the following night. Sadly, the experience we had this time around was quite the opposite to the one we had the previous night. The host was a little scattered — he neither mentioned any specials that were available to us that night nor provided us with their evening meal deals menu. I am convinced, based on what I witnessed throughout the night, that he was more concerned about socializing with a particular group of people and running back and forth to what I assumed to be his car, than he was about doing what he is paid to do.
But I digress. Had we known about the evening deals menu, we would not have ordered off the regular menu because the food off of this particular menu was awful and a bit pricey considering the poor quality. Hubby had the beef burger, which was bland and dry. The patty tasted like it is of the frozen and processed variety. I had the Sea Bass Skewers which consisted of 3 small, thinly-​sliced, rolled up and skewered pieces of over-​buttered and over-​cooked white fish that didn’t taste too much like sea bass. The only saving grace that night was our server, Jamie, who was, incidentally, also our server the previous night. She was just absolutely fantastic.
My rating:
Based on prior years’ experiences: 4*
Based on my most recent experience, I could only recommend this place for the Sunday roast, and therefore, 2.75 *.
Overall rating: 3*.