Well it is supporting a local business..food was delicious..pleasant afternoon..

I had been waiting a few months to get down to the Plough and Harrow, the so-called pub for "grown ups" in Camden (that's the 'edge' they are going with since there are several pubs on this one stretch of the main street). We finally got out there for a weekday lunch so ordered from the lunch specials - these meals are $10 when you purchase a drink. I only scanned some other menu items on the blackboard as I queued to order at the bar but immediately I could see why they needed a gimmick and a lunch special to reel the punters in; the price of the garlic bread almost knocked my socks off! $9.50 per serve!!

Anyway, our meals came out promptly. My chicken schnitzel came out hot and fresh however it had been cooked in oil that was long overdue for disposal... it tasted like something from a Chinese restaurant rather than a simple pub schnitzel. This was unpleasant and disappointing. My chips were mostly hot, some cold, very salty but nice. My husband enjoyed his chips but was less impressed with his fish. I found my small salad (part of the $10 dish) to taste as though something was going rotten in it, probably the carrots but I couldn't put my finger on the source of it.

Unfortunately, we had ordered our one-year-old a serve of garden salad for herself. My husband pointed out to me that this also smelled like something in it had gone off and the lettuce was limp. I could understand that my plate may have been placed under a heat lamp for a short time and that would explain my flaccid lettuce at room-temperature however this bowl should never have come into contact with anything warm. We could not feed it to our daughter.

When a staff member came to clear our plates, my husband asked her if she could smell something rotten in the salad and straight off the bat she said it was probably the dressing (gee, that inspires confidence!!) She said she would ask the chef and took off with the full bowl of salad. We waited while we finished our drinks and though my husband saw her floating around the dining area and kitchen, the woman never returned. Not to apologise, not to offer a refund and not even to give us a fresh bowl of salad though she had taken off with our bowl. Not that we wanted it but if the Plough & Harrow weren't willing to replace a bowl of salad for a toddler, I'm thinking they should have at least brought back the one we paid for.

In any case, rotten salad or not, my husband and I both independently decided never to return - he decided this based on the disappointing fish (he said the fish at The Crown Hotel down the road is better) and I decided based on the old oil they had cooked my lunch in ... and the poor customer service.