Jacks Place in Poole

Good cuisine with excellent staff and welcoming atmosphere.

We always enjoy our visits to the Cliff, and I for one like trying something different. Our Sunday visit proved to be quite interesting. If you haven't tried the octopus starter, you should! It looks great, no doubting what you are eating and it tasted great. The Lamb Shank wasn't available, replaced by Venison Shank, being a Scot that was OK by me. It looked a bit dry and resembled a Polynesian war club, but tasted good, maybe rethink visual. The Sunday roasts were wonderful, no complaints from family. Service, as usual, was excellent. We shall always visit when in Bournemouth.

We used to stay at The Haven many moons ago and wanted to return to see it. It was also a lovely day and hoped we could sit outside and watch the world go by in and out of Poole Harbour. Things started well but gradually became more worrying as our food did not arrive. We ended up waiting around 1.5 hours for our food with no explanation from the kitchen, despite waiting staff apologetically telling us food was ok minutes away. When the food did arrive, my sandwich looked like it had been toasted, it had sat on the pass for that long. They made me another sandwich and took it off the bill. The whole order should have been reimbursed but the bar manager didn't seem to think a 1.5 hour wait for food was problematic. Lovely setting, food good but staff judgement when things went wrong fell well short in my opinion.