Bishoponthebridge Reviews 6

Mini break to Winchester
Went to this pub on a Monday night
Best atmosphere we found on our trip
Very clean? Great drinks, engaging interested staff
Worth finding

It will take a miracle to raise this place from the dead. The government's latest punitive measures, coming on top of the Covid lockdowns, have guaranteed the Bishop's imminent funeral I'm afraid. Those of us who recall its days as one of the best pubs in Winchester will only be able to mourn in silence as the coffin passes through our city. Changing habits and outrageously high prices are to blame, and customers will only put up with so much. I fear the limit has been reached.

I h ad a birthday meal there and what a amazing experience great food and great service
Staff were very friendly
Couldn’t fault it food was lovely and hot

Went there yesterday, great location, great food, great value and friendly staff. Will visit again.

Looking forward to a nice bank holiday lunch with my son, daughter and son in law. This is what we got. We waited over an hour for our order to arrive (when we queried the wait we were offered free drinks), noticing the anxious looks of diners who had been there longer than us. Eventually the food arrived. I had ordered (quotes from menu) 'Norfolk chicken breast, sauteed potatoes, Mrs Owton's bacon, Savoy cabbage, tarragon sauce'. What I got was the worst meal I've ever been served outside of a hospital. Take a look at the photo; do you see any sauteed potatoes (those are boiled baby potatoes), or bacon; the few green specks must be the cabbage, and that looks suspiciously like a chicken thigh; the whole concoction drowning in a puddle of white stuff, presumably the tarragon sauce. Not the sort of thing you'd want to pay £14 for. I sent it back. The manager arrived. I pointed out that it was disgusting and those were boiled potatoes not sauteed. He tried telling me that the sauteed potatoes were mashed up with the cabbage and bacon in the slop in the bottom of the bowl. No, I didn't understand this either.
The others had ordered dishes with 'triple-cooked chips'. See the other photo; they weren't even cooked once. You can get crispier chips at a roadside burger van.
Perhaps the worst thing is that the management must have known they weren't able to cope with the number of customers they kept welcoming. OK, it was bank holiday, but they should have been prepared for that. The excuse offered by one of the waiting staff was that the kitchen was 'overwhelmed'. Meaning what? They didn't have enough cooks for what they should have known would be a busy day? And if they knew they couldn't provide a professional standard of cooking and service they should have been honest enough to have admitted it and stopped serving any more customers. What they did, effectively, is lie to us so that we wouldn't go somewhere else. Why didn't they realise that being dishonest with customers doesn't work in the long run. From what we could hear from other customers we weren't the only disgruntled diners. How many others won't return and will spread the word? Worse still, Winchester is a major tourist city and whatever experience visitors from overseas have in The Bishop on the Bridge will be taken back to their own country as a representative impression of the standards of hospitality people can expect in England.
So, despite the staff apologies and reduced bill I can't accept that this was a one-off or a situation that couldn't have been avoided. Someone at this placed screwed up and tried to muddle through instead of being honest and admitting that the best course would have been not to serve food rather than make customers wait over an hour for really bad food.
As you've probably guessed I won't be returning to this, or any other Fullers establishment, there are plenty of better places to eat. And if I ever find Mr's Owton's bacon on a menu I'm going to be suspicious, so not a good outcome, by association, for her/them.
Can't upload photos to Trustpilot - see my review on Trip Advisor.

The Bishop on the Bridge has just been refurbished. I have to say it looks amazing. The staff can not be friendlier. The food is outstanding and well worth the money. We did not have to wait long for the food, and each course came out quickly and was very hot. The manager was on hand if we needed anything at all and spent time talking to us.
If you are in Winchester then I highly recommend this pub to visit.