The best restaurants serving Mediterranean food in New Forest South East

Food was absolutely lovely with good portion sizes.

Food was good and service excellent, the only thing that spoilt our visit was the children running around the bar area, playing in the toilets and not being supervised by their parents. Not what you would expect from a wine bar.

After a challenging weekend in the New Forest, (not the Forest’s fault) we decided to try and salvage something by having a posh afternoon tea at Burley Manor before returning home. We rang and booked the day before as wifey is both vegetarian and GF, and we wanted to give them a fighting chance. I wish we hadn’t bothered. Let’s start with the parking - there isn’t any if your vehicle is bigger than a small family gadabout. We were in our motorhome, and ended up parking in a field that was open for a separate event. Burley Manor assured us this was fine, and that neither gate (big or small) would be locked. You guessed it - wrong , but we squeezed out thanks to wifey’s skilful driving and steely nerve. Then let’s talk about the perfectly coiffed member of staff who seated us, took our drinks order, sent somebody else over with them, then ignored us for nigh on 45 mins. Finally our afternoon tea arrived and was placed by a disdainful waiter, who when he was confused about who’s was who’s and I pointed out the ramifications of getting it wrong snapped, ‘well I didn’t take the order, did I?’ The food itself was fine, just fine, not excellent or amazing, and certainly not worth £61! When we challenged our disdainful waiter on the horrific wait, he was more than happy to throw his colleagues under the bus, saying that his previous establishment had been much more professional! His excuse was that they had had been overbooked for lunch and had several afternoon tea bookings. They had our phone number, if they couldn’t handle the number of guests, they shouldn’t have taken the booking, or they should have cancelled us. To be honest, the nice man who had accidentally locked us in the field, on his Penny farthing and talked about deer and pigs, but reassured us we would easily get Buzzy the motorhome out was the highlight of the whole debacle, and he didn’t work for Burley Manor!

We arrived for lunch and weren’t sure which way to enter the restaurant. There is a front door but no sign or anything intimating it was the main entrance or whether it was the door for the hotel or the restaurant or both; so we opted for the side gate but still weren’t sure if we were going the correct way. Still not sure whether we had entered the restaurant via the correct route we were seated quickly and my young daughter needed the bathroom: we went to the bathroom leaving my partner at the table and by the time we came back there were still no menus on the table. I did wonder if it was the start of things to come. However, thankfully, I was wrong. Everything after that was seamless. Service was good and food was great. My partner had the burger, I had eggs Benedict and my daughter had pizza. My only personal preference with the eggs Benedict would be to have a thick slice of ham, but as I say, that’s my personal preference. All the food was good quality. We liked the seating arrangements too; tables weren’t squeezed in and there was plenty of space between tables. We’ve already recommended this place to friends and family and will return ourselves in the area.