The Old Forge - Highland

Read the reviews and believe them I can only think that some of the good ones are friends or family as from the 1st minute you walk in the old forge you sense an unwelcoming atmosphere. I had the pleasure of visiting knoydart many years ago while working on a community project and had lunch at the old forge, I remember having a lovely lunch in front of a roaring log fire talking away to lovely staff who you could tell really enjoyed their work. On this visit I said I'd love to come back with my wife, so after about 15 years I finally had the opportunity to do just that.We went across on the western Isles ferry on a day where the weather was at best diabolical. Wind and driving rain never stopped all day.I'd booked a table for noon the week b4 as I thought it might be busy and didnt know if the covid restrictions would harm our chances of getting one.Boat arrived at 11.00 sharp and after walking in torrential rain I was disappointed to find the pub closed with no sign telling you when it opened. We had to sit in a small wooden shelter across the road and wait til 12 when the doors opened but I thought oh well we can go in and sit at that roaring open fire I remembered but alas it hadn't been lit so we sat down at our table and had a drink. As people have stated in previous reviews there are 2 staff members the owner and a younger man, he served us our drinks whilst the manager took our orders. I fully understand that seafood restaurants will sell mostly seafood but the menu in here is so tiny you are left with very little choice if you are not big on seafood.We went for the vegetarian soup option for starter which was some sort of water cress soup. Out of 10 I'd give it a 2, it was hot and that was the best I could say about it.Main course the only non seafood option was venison stew. Please see the attached picture, it tasted ok but the beef was dry and over cooked.My wife fancied nothing at all on the menu so we asked if she could have a larger portion of the smoked salmon starter and the manager said yes and I will give you chips with that. Little did we know he was going to double the price of the starter and also charge £6 for the dozen or so frozen chips he put out.Desert had 3 options we chose the cheese board as we didnt fancy the other ones but we were told they didnt have any cheese so I had a chocolate mouse, which was solid and a bit of packet shortbread jammed into it. My wife had Belgian waffle and hot chocolate. She said she had better waffles out of Asda. In all I had 3 pints of shandy my wife had a coke.Bill came to almost £100 and know what if the food had been better I wouldn't grudge that as running a place as remote as this must be difficult but the whole experience was not worth the cost of the ferry £44 plus the meal costs.Would I recommend it, absolutely not unless it was someone I didnt like.As though our day couldn't be any worse, the boat back to mallaig wasnt due for another hour or so and we sat looking at the rain bouncing off the ground outside and the owner said I am closing you will have to leave.So we had to go sit in a shelter until the boat arrived. How difficult would it be to leave the bar open for an hour until the boat arrives especially on days when the weather is like this.I feel sorry for the inhabitants of knoydart as they seem to be stuck with a very poor owner of what used to be a great wee attraction. I'm sure they are missing out on income due to the attitude of this one man.Trip advisor really needs a 0 star option for guys like him.

I hiked from Fort William to Inverie last week and for at least half that time all I wanted was a proper fish and chips pub lunch at the end of the journey. The most remote pub in Britain would surely have excellent pub food, right?Wrong.For starters, this place is more like someone 's badly executed idea of what a pub should look like rather than an actual pub. Sure, you 'll find your well stocked bar at the entrance, and your wooden furniture, and even a great big fireplace further in but there 's still something off about the design of this place, something deeply inauthentic. Then there 's the staff. The young lad serving our table was actually very nice and polite, it 's his supervisor or perhaps just a more senior waiter? that was shockingly rude. We serve only real food here is an actual phrase he said to a customer asking for something that wasn 't on the menu. Perhaps he felt emboldened by the mask he was wearing as I truly have no idea how anyone could say things like that to a customer and not immediately die of embarrassment but there we are...Fish and chips wasn 't on the menu either, by the way. Because apparently none of the fish served as part of fish and chips orders in Scotland is authentically Scottish according to the same senior waiter . Instead and to my vegetarian partner 's horror I had to settle for muscles and chips. Chips were very clearly cooked from frozen and pretty tasteless, with no condiments offered. Muscles were sad at best and deeply unsatisfying after a week long hike. My partner had the only vegetarian option, which that day was ravioli. To our mutual relief, that was actually good just probably not what you 'd want from a pub lunch after a sweaty hike.Onto dessert. The Belgian waffles on the pub counter looked very appealing so we had a couple of those with a cup of cappuccino each. But we clearly got too relaxed. I mean, it 's pretty hard to **** up a waffle and a coffee! Yet **** up they did. The waffles were served cold, with no toppings offered, and were crumbly and dry. Even the cappuccino ! was bad and tasted more like soluble coffee with some frothy milk than an actual cappuccino.All that for eye watering £65. Rude service not included. You couldn 't make it up!I do wonder what the locals think of the clown who runs this place. There 's a two page printout of an article about him buying the Old Forge a few years back pinned to the wall that goes on at length about which high end hotels he worked at and which celebs he personally looked after. What a joke! But also pretty infuriating to think that the only local pub was taken over by some sleazy former salesman who is completely oblivious of the environment he 's operating in. Whether you 're thinking of sailing here for Mallaig for a day or want to stop by here at the end of your mountain adventures in Knoydart, if you 're after a decent pub experience, this ain 't it.

Had a nice wee sail to Knoydart for a couple of pints and some food. Really fancied the Lobster Bisque however the landlord very strangely refused to sell me it, telling me it’s a starter and how can he keep the business going if I don’t order a main. Ended up having to order the venison stew which was really nice. When we paid, the landlord helped himself to a tip on the card machine, very nice of him. Shame, could be a nice place but we won’t be back. 2/10.

I have never been spoken to so rudely by a pub landlord in my life, and I have been to a lot of pubs! He was very critical that we hadn 't ordered enough food and apparently completely unconcerned as we walked out. A diner at a neighbouring table said I don 't blame you after she heard the guy speak to us in that manner. Not sure how he ever chose the hospitality industry for a career, he is totally unsuited to it. The food and drink is very expensive, and to cap it all he wasn 't operating a contact tracing system of customers either. We will never visit again and would advise everyone else to avoid it altogether. Great shame as Knoydart is a great spot.

If we had thought the terrifying experience of the 6 hour walk out of knoydart after a months worth of rain was the worst thing that would happen to us that day, we were sadly mistaken. We arrived in knoydart at 2pm soaked, cold and some what beaten by the trek we had all endured, JP the owner said he was closing the pub to clean it and we would all have to wait in the rain till 5, luckily there is a wooden shelter across the road that the locals use as a pub, this seamed strange at the time but would all become clear as the night wore on. We got drinks when we got in the pub, these were all overpriced and seemed to get more expensive everytime you ordered, my mates larger tasted of pipe cleaner, JP wasn 't bothered about this as he had his £5.50. 13 of us ordered food next, the food was really expensive and was at best average, JP got round this problem though by just not putting certain items on the menu or the specials board and that way you didn 't realise the price until you payed, what an clever chap. One of our group didn 't want a starter, this would be JP 's first dark turn of the night, how can I make a living when people dont have starters the angry man roared. I would have thought the £22 burger he was having, or the tiny £27 stake my friend got might have left him enough money to survive on, maybe we can set up a go fund me page up to help JP through the hard times when people skip ordering a soup. When the food arrived we weren 't offered sauce or anything I didn 't ask as JP seemed to be in his element scouring at people and I didn 't want to ruin it for him, needn 't have worried as he had hours more of this to enjoy. I visted the toilet after dinner, turns out the 3 hours we stood in the rain didn 't give them time to clean this, it gave off a trainspotting vibe, I didn 't drop a valium in the toilet like in the fim, shame really as in my 33 years on this planet I have never met a man that could benefit from one of these more than JP When I went to pay JP was incredibly annoyed that he had to take payment from me, apparently taking people 's money was becoming a **** nightmare after paying I decided to have desert and would have to go through this all again, my cold waffle with a can of coke turned out to be £14 pounds, it was certainly not worth that, however I didn 't complain as JP had earlier told us that british people didn 't know how to eat, I bet I had just ate the waffle wrong and infact it had been brilliant. Later on I retired to my accommodation down the road, my friend had to come and get me as JP now belived I hadn 't paid, he became incredibly aggressive despite realising I had paid, being a red headed lad I decided not to fight back to much in case I had made the list of endangered creatures that JP apparently loves to shoot in the face. I noticed over the night that he didn 't like english people, oh or Scottish people, oh reading other reviews he also doesn 't like gay people, not sure why he chose to be in a job where he has to deal with people maybe that 's why he chose the most remote pub in Britain. Hopefully one of the endangered species he apparently loves to shoot will fight back one day and the locals can have their lovely pub back. I imagine JP letting his first smile of the night out heading home his pockets full of the gold he had ripped from the hikers he despised so much. This pub would work really well if they offered it as an experience day and JP 's terrible cutomer service was part of the day, think I might have enjoyed myself then.