The Horseshoe

Met here as its close to where my friends live. Nice little pub. Dog friendly (they brought a dog bowl of water over pretty much as soon as I sat down) food was tasty and the beer was. well, beer.
Didn’t really stay long enough to get in to the nitty gritty of what they had on tap, but definitely well worth a visit if you’re in the area, looking for a nice pub.
People friendly and dog friendly. Good combination!

It’s with heavy heart that I have to tell you to avoid this place at all costs. This is my local pub/​restaurant and over the past 17 years I have watched it change… and not for the better.
The venue is perfect, and the (ever changing) staff are generally very friendly, but the food… this has gotten worse and worse over the years, as I shall now explain.
My wife and I decided to give the place another go (last time had us waiting an hour and a half for food) so we arrived and ordered fish pie (my wife) and the seafood mixed grill (my choice). Now being prepared for a long wait we ordered bread and settled down to wait. True to expectations, the food arrived nearly an hour later… but that was just the beginning of the disappointment.
Both dishes were severely over-​cooked… my fish steaks were now so small and hard, I could pick one up and easily ‘snap’ it with my fingers. My portion of seasoned chips were about 5 or 6 french fries and my asparagus and spring onions were just that… 1 asparagus (minus the head) and 1 spring onion. The portions would have made ‘nouvelle cuisine’ blush.
But my wife’s meal was worse…
They forgot to serve my wife’s side order, and her pie was also a dried brick in a dish that would need a small pick-​axe to get into. Worse still, the dish had clearly been previously eaten and sent back, as there were parts missing clearly indicating someone had tried and returned the food. The meal had obviously been reheated and now served to my wife!
We complained and returned the late and inedible food, and when we pointed out that someone had clearly already started to eat the pie, the waitress said:
«oh… that’s just the juice pushing the pie to one side». I kid you not!
Apparently… when everyone else cooks a pie in an oven dish the liquid fills the dish BUT at the Harrow, the liquid defies physics and instead moves the pie to the side of the dish leaving a void that looks like missing mouthfulls.
Please, please… do not waste your time nor your money at this (so called) restaurant. If you think my case is unique, just google the restaurant for reviews and you’ll see that my experience is the norm.

The Harrow Inn is what we in Croydon think of as a country pub. It’s only a couple of miles out of Croydon, between Selsdon and Warlingham, but you have to drive along some narrow tree-​lined roads to get there, and there are some fields nearby. Behind the pub there is a paddock with some Shetland Pony-​type things in it. This means ‘countryside’.
Over the years, the Harrow has built up a reputation as a foodie pub, and as such it is now almost solely a food destination, which makes it the kind of pub I despise. That aside, the reputation isn’t really deserved. For a while it did run a really good kitchen, but now it’s an Ember Inn, and the offering is bog standard. The table turnover is very high — no dallying once you’ve eaten, and it’s often full of familes — two things guaranteed to ruin any meal for me.
The staff at the Harrow are very good, though — always smartly turned out, polite and very willing to help, which is nice.
As for making the trip out there — I only do so when someone else particularly wants to, or in the summer when you can take advantage of the big garden. Otherwise, I think it’s worth driving just that little bit further and finding a real country pub.