Delicious food, friendly staff and good beer on tap - a winning combo.

The pub is in a lovely spot and the people that run the place are vey welcoming. My family and I are "regulars" and last Sunday we had an excellent meal. My roast was near perfection and I managed to save room for a pud - which was a treat!

My husband and I took our friend and wife to The Anchor at Nayland for a Birthday lunch, but instead of a treat we had a terrible experience. The location is beautiful and we have had good meals there in the past. However, they seem to have some very inexperienced young girls (one in partiular had an incredibly poor attitude) on their staff; which is a real pity and will be detrimental to their reputation. I had speghetti & meatballs; the pasta was very soggy and incredibly salty. Our friends had fish and chips with mushy peas and the fish smelt and tasted of ammonia. When I complained to the server, she took the meals to the chef and came back to report that there was nothing wrong with the fish, the pasta was freshly made and therefore on the 'sof't' side and no salt was used to cook the pasta as the pasta was cooked without salt and then tossed in some salted butter after cooking. I am an experienced cook and run my own catering business and I know that a quantity of salt needs to be added to cook pasta, fresh pasta need not be soggy / soft and surely if pasta must be tossed in something, then it should be a little olive oil?! My friend also tasted the pasta and agreed with me that it was over salted. I would have been happy to have had the pasta replaced, but when I was told by the server that there was nothing wrong with it, I couldn't trust the chef not to produce another plate of inedible pasta and so asked for a sandwich, only to be told in a most patronising manner by the very unhelpful server that they only have egg or salted beef and that I wouldn't like the beef as it was salted!! I had to bite my tongue by now and really had lost all appetite but in a last desparate attempt to order some food thought that a salad would be safe, I was promptly informed that they only had a side salad - surely, they could have slapped some smoked meats (seeing as they have a smoke house and smoked meats is their speciality) on a side salad to appease an already unsatisfied diner? The server's attitude was appalling and were she working for me I would have fired her on the spot! On reflection, I should have asked for the chef, but felt that this had already spoilt our meal and didn't want to push it further. I wonder if they used bicarbonate of soda in their mushy peas and this had contaiminated the fish, which incidentally was beautifully cooked in a very light and crispy batter. My friends replaced their fish with a wild boar burger which did need salt! I didn't order anything else and waited for my pudding as I had ordered a 3 course meal deal (giving credit where its due, the starter of vegetable terrine was delicious). This was a gooseberry creme burlee which was approx. 5mm high and had the texture of an egg custard. With teas and coffees ordered, my tea cup was dirty and we were only given warm milk for both teas and coffee - I think that the server had it in for us and was determined to make sure our dinning experience was disasterous to the end! After our ordeal, we didn't even get a complimentary cup of tea. No apologies either. There was one helpful waitress, she had a mild US / Canadian accent which proves that the Brits can learn an awful lot about service from our cousins in North America... Visited July 2011