Seven Wells
Public Houses in Derby
Heage Lane
Etwall
Derby
Derbyshire
DE65 6LS
Contact Numbers
Reviews
Recommended
we booked a table at the seven wells after seing it advertised in the times , three courses for ten pounds. very impressed with the service and food. went back every week since i recomend the melt it the middle chocolate pudding with custard very very tasty yum yum.
h ferris - 27/04/2008 | report this review
Excellent Value
Been to the Severn Wells a number of times with the family for a meal and sometimes for a snack while out walking at the weekend. Allways had a great time with good food and a good choice of ales - thoroughly recommended
dennis king - 28/12/2005 | report this review
Magical
Me and the family stumbled across the Wells almost by accident and it turned out to be the best pub we had ever been too. Full of character and so clean not many pubs can boast that anymore!! The staff where attentive and friendly and the choice of menu was so wide and interestingly varied. We now go there once a week and it just gets better, i have just had their christmas fayre at a bargain 13.99 and loved every minute, anyone reading this simply just go
stuart Baddiley - 15/12/2004 | report this review
Cheap & Miserable
You know when you find a pub or a restaurant you really enjoy eating at; do you find there's nothing more disappointing when you find out it's changed completely? This is what happened to us on Friday night, when we choose to dine at the Seven Wells pub. We had been many time previously and we'd always found the food to be excellent, with a good range of special dishes and decent amount of variety in the menu. The style of food was very much “pubby" (as you would expect from a pub), but the portions were large, and was normally served with a tasty bowl of good fresh salad and a few bread rolls to get you in the mood (whether you'd asked for them or not). For those of you who don't know, I'm currently doing the Slimming World diet. I recalled that this particular pub had a special Slimming World menu, complete with the number of “syns" for each dish. So when it came to choosing a venue for our pre-Big Brother Friday night outing, this seemed to be the logical choice. BUILDING AND ATMOSPHERE I wish I had snapped a picture of the building on the way in, because it really is rather nice. Even though it was built only a matter of a few years ago, it looks like it had been conveniently situated next to a junction of a main road for ages. Outside, the choice of brickwork, fussy shaped building and old tiles capping a complicated roof line really did make it look like it was from the Victorian era. The only thing to really give the game away is the large flat car park and access road (which still looked very new) and the plethora of carefully hidden kitchen chimneys emanating from the rear. I did notice on the way in that it was now branded as a “Hardys and Hansons". I had no idea who they were, but I could have sworn that it used to be a “Kimberly Ales" pub in the past. Inside, the olde-worlde theme continues, with careful use of high, vaulted ceilings, exposed brickwork, fireplaces and wooden partitions. It's only when you start to look carefully at the cunningly disguised air-conditioning units, you realise that the design of this place had been penned within the last decade. The décor had the usual collection of old pictures and assorted random crap on the walls. Done badly, this would probably have looked like an early 80's Berni Inn – but it seemed to work well here. The pub was predominately non-smoking including most of the seating areas and the bars. There was one large smoking section tucked away behind a partition. In fact this was one of the places I was referring to when I was arguing that you can still allow the evil smokers inside without ruining everyone's dinner. To be honest layout meant that virtually no smoke left the designated area and decent ventilation ensured that within its confines it didn't feel like you were sitting next to a tyre-burning bonfire. So far, top marks. (For a picture, see links at the bottom of this review) MENU & SERVICE At first glance the menu did seem a little different last time. A longer look confirmed that it was completely different. The fancy dishes of old had been ditched in favour of what seemed to be decent value pub food. Together with the main menu, there was the Slimming World menu (about 5 dishes), a cheapie menu (for those early birds amongst you) and a “specials" board. I say “specials" because they didn't look particularly special as they'd been painted on to the board, rather than chalked. In all the choices reminded me more of a Tom Cobleigh, which is no bad thing as I've nothing particularly against them. We ordered our food at the bar, and starters and main courses for 4 came to about £40.00, so it seemed quite good value. We'd also ordered some drinks off a rather impolite and sour faced woman and returned to our table. A few minutes later a young looking waiter (to be honest they all looked pretty young) came to set our table. He was polite, but not very talkative, in a sort of “do you want fries with that?" sort of way. FOOD To start I had ordered Sweet and Sour chicken balls (yes I know, not very slimming, but I couldn't bring myself to order melon), and others on the table selected a combo platter for 2 and a portion of nachos. Mine arrived on a small plate with about 4 balls of battered chicken, a miserable bit of salad and a sweet and sour dip. It didn't taste very good; the chicken was hard, tasteless and overcooked. My dip still came complete with the lid in a little disposable dish (I'm sure it wouldn't have taken them a moment to serve it properly). The nachos were ok, but weren't very nicely presented – a dollop of some beef mince concoction in the centre with a couple of small blobs of salsa and sour cream around the edge. The Combo for 2 was particularly nasty – the same hard chicken as mine, coupled with some overcooked, tasteless mushrooms and onion rings, with a few slices of unremarkable garlic bread. For main course, I'd ordered “Cajun Chicken". It was the same sort of Brakes Brothers Cajun chicken you can order in pubs the country over, and it was quite tasty. But then again, it had only been thawed out under the grill, it's not too difficult to cook correctly. The new potatoes I had were pretty good and the side salad was small and average. Across the table, the “Chicken Steak with Broccoli and Cheese", which the menu described as “Succulent chicken breast fillet with a delicious topping of broccoli, cheese and onions wrapped in a crispy crumb", was particularly vile. If you can imagine the cheapest bit of processed chicken you get from the value cabinet at Farmfoods, you are getting close. The chicken seemed to be a reformed small slab of beaks and eyebrows topped with the world's smallest bit of broccoli and processed cheese. It was then wrapped in rock hard breadcrumbs and overcooked. At less than 2 cm's tall, it was hardly bursting with filling or taste. It was served with “Golden Rice" (rice with yellow colouring), carrots and peas. The carrots were some of the worst imaginable – fresh out of a bag of preservatives and microwave to with in an inch of their lives, they managed to taste both hard and wet at the same time. The fajitas selected by my good friend Tim were average and edible (nothing more) and came with a few more lidded pots of dipping stuff. Claire's plaice was also covered in the same rock hard breadcrumbs as the chicken and contained only a microscopic amount of fish. It had also obviously split in half in the deep fat fryers, so the fish had soaked up the grease like a sponge. As you can imagine, this was equally repellent main-dish. SUMMARY Did we complain? No. If someone had asked us “is everything OK with your meals?" then it would have been a definite “Well, no....". But seeing as though we were in a hurry and overcooked crap seemed to be standard fayre for this place, we didn't bother. I have nothing against chain pubs, I fact I've nothing really against cheap pub food. But when you mix together cheap quality food and then cook it badly, you've got a recipe for disaster. I think one of the most effective ways of expressing you dissatisfaction in an establishment is to send them a letter explaining why, and then vote with your feet. Personally, I wouldn't eat there (or at any of this chain) again if it was the last place on earth.... Thanks for reading. Rob Pub homepage (menu and photos): http://www.pub-explorer.com/derbyshire/pub/sevenwellsetwall.htm Also posted at http://www.ciao.co.uk/Hardys_and_Hansons__Review_5420261
Robert Parnham - 01/06/2004 | report this review
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