Sunday lunch at The Foresters

The Foresters garden

specials chalked up

The Foresters slow-roast belly of pork

At The Mulberry in Farnham, a burger will cost you upwards of £8-50. For that I would expect something special, especially as they boast they are the home of gourmet burgers. I tried one last year. It was disgusting, the service was appalling too.

To give some idea of the prices on the lunchtime menu at at The Foresters, a burger is an eye-watering £11-95! Or in other words, everything on the menu was expensive.

In the end I thought, if it is expensive, I may as well have something worth paying the money for. I chose slow-roasted belly of pork, which was served with potatoes and savoy cabbage (which I do not particularly like). It arrived with a tiny piece of leaf of a savoy cabbage and a little jug of gravy. It did not really need gravy, but I tried it anyway.

To be fair, it was good, but at that price it had to be good.

This was by no means the most expensive dish. There was a beef dish on the menu that was over £30!

I was with a friend, he had ham, egg and chips. Again very expensive for ham, egg and chips. It came with two eggs and a generous portion of quality ham, thickly sliced. It looked to be quality and he said it was good, and saved half of his ham for lunch the next day.

We had to drink a pint each of Hog’s Back Tea. All the real ales were locally sourced.

We had with us a dog, a Labrador, and she enjoyed what we gave her after the meal.

Too many pubs serve white van chiller food knocked hotted up in a microwave. It may have been pricey but at The Foresters, freshly prepared quality food.

A lot of nonsense has been written on TripAdvisor that the service at The Foresters is poor. We had no problems with the service.

The Forester is in the middle of nowhere, somewhere between Aldershot and Church Crookham, if you travel along the road that runs alongside the Basingstoke Canal to Fleet, then turns off to Church Crookham.

From the back of the pub, a view overlooking heathland, heath grassland and pine woodlands. At least there used to be, a hedge now blocks the view.

Across the road, heath grassland, mixed pine and oak woodlands.

There was far more people eating outside than could be accounted for by the number of cars. I guess people either walked there or came by cycle, quite a few had cycles.

Dog friendly, we were not the only ones with a dog.

The location of the pub was extremely dangerous for crossing the road. It needs a speed limit.

After lunch a long afternoon walk across the heathlands, where we met some interesting cattle roaming wild, dark brown with a broad white stripe around their middle.

Tags: food, lunch, The Foresters