By Seren Charrington-Hollins 
This weekend I thought I would enjoy the luxury of not cooking Sunday lunch and instead booked a table at a family-run 17th-century Shropshire border inn, known as The Old Hand and Diamond. They offer a Sunday carvery lunch, priced at £22.95 for three courses per adult or £9.99 for children. When I popped in to book the table, they were busy and I saw lots of diners tucking into their carvery lunches and I was really looking forward to eating mine.
The inn itself is charming and very cosy. Upon arrival the staff were very friendly and once seated, drinks orders were taken swiftly. All was going very well.
After a morning of grocery shopping, running errands followed by a brief walk to build up the children’s appetite, we were all looking forward to a delicious lunch. The menu was simple, but ample. The starters on offer were a home-made vegetable soup, chicken parfait, melon with raspberry coulis or a prawn cocktail. 
Our party ordered soup, melon and a prawn cocktail. The soups arrived first and were a rather unappetising colour and were lukewarm. The taste was underwhelming, lacking seasoning and having a grainy texture, it was undoubtedly made in house, but it wasn’t pleasant.
The prawn cocktail was acceptable, but prawns were a little overwhelmed by lettuce, meanwhile the melon was not melon balls as advertised but chopped melon with a small ball of coulis on top, it was ok, but that was about it. Feeling a little underwhelmed we headed off to the carvery and I hoped that this would be fresh, delicious and make up for the disappointing starters, but it didn’t. The vegetarian tarts were quite nice in taste, but the pastry was dry, the beef was dry and in short supply, meanwhile the turkey was dry and again in meagre rations. The Yorkshire puddings were overcooked, just being brittle and unpleasant, the vegetable options though plentiful were not fresh and tasty, but rather sad and over cooked. The roast potatoes were not pleasant and the parsnips were charred rather than roasted. Soggy greens, limp carrots and the taste of disappointment summed up this carvery. Overall, it was a very poor lunch and pudding was terrible. 
An unbaked Bailey’s cheesecake was unevenly portioned and was passable, whilst the apple pie turned out to be apple tart that had to be sent back on first serving as the pastry was like old shoe leather, chewy and impossible to cut, the second attempt was a small portion of tart that was burned on the edges and contained a hint of apple and was overall disappointing. Meanwhile the cornflake and ganache tart was just peculiar.
It was a great pity that this carvery lunch didn’t deliver as I had hoped for a lot more. When I said that the meal was disappointing, I received a polite reply of ‘I’m sorry about that’. It is a great shame that I had a less than satisfactory lunch as it a traditional and pretty pub, that could do a lot better. I paid the bill and I am in no rush to return. I noted that the establishment has mixed reviews for food, but overall, the feedback is good and I have heard very good things , about the carvery, so perhaps I was unfortunate.
