Navigation Inn

Very Regular food and average service. Tried it out on vacation and while I was not expecting anything great. It was just about regular.

I would rate this place right down the middle and I will tell you why. While the décor and atmosphere is definitely 5 star, the service and food fall below the mark. When we arrived for our 6:30pm reservation there seemed to be a bit of confusion and chaos amongst the staff. They couldn’t find anyone’s reservation and the restaurant was pretty empty. Logic would have dictated just to seat people at open tables, but they made our group along with two others wait to be seated. Our table service was attentive, but it was almost comical when a server came to our table to drop off the remaining starter and couldn’t seem to figure out that the dish was for the only person without a plate in front of them. The food was average; definitely nothing to rave about. I had the scallops special as a starter and they were quite small. For a main I ordered a steak salad, but I had to cut away a bit of fat. Typically you would serve a leaner piece of meat in a steak, so that bothered me. Plus there were gherkins in the salad? Weird. My mother had the rack of lamb and hers was quite fatty as well. For dessert my husband had a brownie/​banana sundae and it was just pieces of dry chopped brownie — not much banana or anything. He left half of it and he never does that. I would probably come back again, but it would be more for the atmosphere than the food.

Had a total face-​lift in June. Excellent choice of food with a distinctly Italian feel. Reasonable prices. Good views along the canal if you can get a window seat. Busy so good idea to book.

I love the canalside location of this pub, the views are beautiful. The inside of the pub is cosy and nice. It is also dog friendly.

This pub is in a lovely location beside the canal with a garden and glazed terrace bar. The décor suggests a run-​down roadside café and they should put all the furniture on a big bonfire. It could be so much nicer inside. The food was good although service was inattentive and a bit slow. Still a good place to go but could be improved so much.

Nice pub set near the canal. Went here before a year ago or so, it was really nice food. Came back here on Sunday, to be honest I was not really impressed, which is a real shame. Not as much on the menu as last time. Firstly ordered our starters, mine and my partners salads looked abit dead and brown on the edges. My partner found a piece of hair and I had some unexplained object in my salad, and my lemon piece looked like it had been left of to dry for a good few days.
Did take up with the waitress who was very nice and apologetic about this. Was abit unsure whether to stay for our main courses, but we did. Luckily that it was much more better than the starters!
For the prices they charge I would expect the food standard to be much more higher. Just hope they are able to get back to the top quality food they used to produce. Parking does provide quite alot of room.
09÷03÷13− Down graded to two stars, after more dining experience. Realised what they done was really totally unacceptable.

The Navigation is a nice place in the summer to sit with a drink by the Grand Union Canal, or any time of year for a good pub with an excellent menu. In the summer the outside can be a little noisy with children enjoying themselves noisily.
There is a separate up-​market restaurant called Cameron’s, but I haven’t tried this yet.
Sunday’s menu includes traditional roasts, but otherwise includes sandwiches, burgers, homemade pies, bangers and mash and steaks. I’ve eaten here several times and the food has always been good.
The pub is old and situated on the banks of the canal, and the garden and car park are both a little uneven. The staff are friendly and the service is good, recommended.

It’s great that a local restaurant aspires to fine dining but the Navigation Inn does not yet achieve it. Having patronised this canalside pub for 15 years or so I know it’s a great place to sit on the grass beside the water or up on the decking to have a quiet beer and decent sandwich in summer. The restaurant has always been a stalwart standby but has recently been given over to showcase the talents of BBC’s Masterchef contestant Dan Cameron and it now claims to offer a fine dining experience.
Sadly the pub itself seems to be a victim of its own success with cars parked all over the pavement (to the detriment of the flower troughs) and fag-​ends liberally littering the kerbs outside, especially around the dingy little smokers’ shelter beside the front door. Inside the pub is as warm and welcoming as ever but going through the door to the restaurant suddenly seems Spartan and cold. There are only six tables which leaves an uncomfortably large gap in the middle of the floor and reminded me of some of those provincial Eastern European restaurants that couldn’t quite afford enough tables to fill the room.
The only attempt at creating a contemporary dining experience is a couple of swathes of garish purple wall paper around the staircase and a couple of black tin lampshades without star cut-​outs; the rest continues to look like an ordinary pub restaurant that’s been made to look a little more traditional by painting some 4×2 timbers black and nailing them to the ceiling to look like exposed rafters.
Two other thoughts; there was no door between the restaurant and the bar so throughout my meal I could see everything the bar staff were doing which was distracting at least and secondly, the people outside on the decking enjoying the live band were moving around outside the window next to our table, blocking an otherwise fabulous canalside view and the live music drowned out the mood music being played inside Cameron’s. This wasn’t a great disaster as the live band sounded much better than the piped elevator music but it spoke volumes (no pun intended) about dangers of trying to marry fine dining with a lively local canalside pub.
Almost in passing I’d mention that the food (when it arrived) was excellent, absolutely marvellous but we did wait an hour for the main course to arrive having decided that we couldn’t find a starter to our liking (with only 4 starters and 4 main courses the menu may be a little too limited). By the time the main course arrived we’d finished our wine and couldn’t have any more as we were driving so had to drink just water for the subsequent hour and a half that it took to be served a cheese course and desert not really what we wanted for what was supposed to be a special night out for my wife and I. Service was fine if a little too formal at times.
Overall, £128 for two, three-​course covers plus a bottle of Sancerre was fully justified by the quality of the food but badly let down by the quality of the location. Cameron’s at the Navigation Inn certainly delivers fine food but falls a long way short of providing a fine dining experience and will continue to do so unless someone is willing to invest heavily in bringing the dining area upto a suitable standard.

Stopped here when cycling in the area once and I have no idea why we’ve only been back once since, we just never got round to going back there.
The food is absolutely delicious. The fact the head chef used to work with Gordon Ramsay says it all, I’m sure it’s award winning grub!
We were lucky enough to be there on a Sunday so obviously had a Sunday lunch and it was delicious. It was there I first had sauteed parsnip peeling with my roast — believe me, it’s much tastier than it sounds!
The dining area is a conservatory at the back of the pub with wooden flooring and tables.
The pub’s on the Grand Union canal so you can sit and eat or drink and see the canal barges go past.
Don’t confuse this Navigation Inn with the one at Stoke Bruerne — it’s completely separate.