The Antelope at Upavon

Food vastly over priced for basic quality. Bar manager(?) running the bar & dealing with our book-in etc - he was very helpful throughout. Alas the landlady who appeared early evening'ish was not really bothered having asked us if everything was ok the food, I'd said my carbonara was not particularly hot. Such a great shame as this old inn could be so much better - reduce food prices, even short term, to get some repeat customers! This delux room's bathroom door needs sorting out as it had to be fought with to close or open it. Really is such a waste as the bar area, almost divided into two, with open fire seemed busy enough with locals at the weekend for drinking at least. A decent sized dining/breakfast area. The stairwell area up to the rooms could do with a freshen up. Not the time of year to use the beer garden but clearly on view was the big gas tank serving the inn as the fencing screening it had partly collapsed due to its age. Plenty of parking.

Room was old and tired carpet dirty curtains threadbare lovely big bath with a separate shower grouting all black and mouldy such a shame. The room rate was inclusive of a full English breakfast which was cold and made up of the cheapest produce, help yourself toaster still waiting now for the toast. We booked as the room shown on website looked amazing what we got was totally different.

Well, where can I start? Having travelled around trying to find somewhere to eat for Sunday lunch, we decided to try the Antelope, one of our friends ran it some years ago and he recommended giving it a go as all other pubs were fully booked and the pub across the road, the Ship Inn, was fully booked again as it had been on Sundays for several months. The emergency bells first rang in my head when I entered the pub to ask if they could fit us in but was greeted by an empty pub except for a table of 4 drinking and eating nuts, but no one else!! I was told by a gentleman sat at the bar ( presumably the Chef ) that there was a deal on for Sunday lunch, £30 for 2 instead of £15.95 per person, well, we were starving so decided to give it a go but to be honest our expectations were low due to the lack of customers, but we were hoping we might have found a gem for the money being charged, sadly our first fears come to fruition when the 2 beef Sunday lunches finally arrived. The beef had been clearly overcooked and had been very thinly sliced on a slicing machine, the Yorkshire pudding was so obviously made by a lady called Aunt Bessie and the broccoli was due to flower, and the potatoes were difficult to work out, neither roasted or boiled, not sure what they were however, the gravy was tasty but not worth £30 for these 2 so called Sunday lunches as at that price I would have expected so much more than what was presented, it was very amateur, the kind of thing you might get at a cafe for a tenner at most. Such a shame, I've been in the business for many years and would never have served what we had for the kind of money we were charged, to add insult to injury we weren't asked once how our meal was, we were given condiments to go with the meal, a wooden box with a supermarket tomato sauce bottle and a bottle of mayonnaise from the same supermarket, both still labelled and filthy, it came as no surprise why the place had nobody else eating, why would you spend that kind of money on such a poor couple of plates of food when there are many many other places locally that would be well worth visiting for the same money but with a far more superior offering of food. My advice would be to employ a trained chef and let them flourish in the kitchen and breath some fresh life into this tired and unloved business, I've spent a previous career turning hospitality businesses around, its not hard to do, just needs love and attention to detail without being greedy, sourcing fresh local produce and cooking from scratch isn't difficult, giving a good portion which is well presented and produced with care and attention to detail is what is needed now, sadly this isn't the case at the Antelope, not a very good experience, we ate the meal, why wouldn't you for £30 but then left, sadly never to return.