The Roebuck Inn, Wickham | Takeaway review

In these bleak lockdown times, we’ve been missing our trips to proper pubs.

When we read about The Roebuck Inn in Wickham and its mission to stay open and fend off developers, we knew exactly how we could help this independent pub’s plight – by doing what we do best, scoffing some food.

If you’ve not yet heard about The Roebuck, it’s a proper pub – bar, restaurant, garden, car park, even some rooms with bed and breakfast – on the A32, just outside Wickham, in the countryside.

If it’s not in the South Downs National Park, then you could most likely throw a stone from the car park and it would land inside the boundary.

The old Meon Valley railway line runs along the back, which has now been converted into an excellent footpath, and in better times, the pub makes an excellent stop-off on a long country walk.

In early 2020, the pub closed and was empty for months, until new landlord Sara Pollard-Dambach and her husband Oli took it over in August and brought it back to life.

However, the pub business is a tricky one and Covid-19 has seen it open and close, with the pub owner closely watching to see if it should stay a business – or whether it would make a nice home, or should we say few homes.

Sara and Oli, who have run catering businesses across the area, have brought their love of food – and schnitzels – to the pub and throughout lockdown have been providing a takeaway service.

We check out the menu on its website and call to place our order.

Dish Detective should know better than to throw stones in glass houses, but don’t let the spelling mistakes on the website put you off.

Food is their strong point, not grammar.

We arrive to collect our two meals – chicken burger and a beefburger (both £12) – at our allotted time and it’s strange to see the pub not being used as a pub.

There’s clutter here and there, and piles of donations for a charity, but at least the place still has the lights on, and is still clearly a hub of activity.

Sara is friendly and helpful and the food is promptly handed over. No hanging about.

It smells delicious in the car on the drive home.

Ravenous, we rip into the paper and find wonderful good solid pub grub – just what the doctor ordered.

The chips are perfect, gosh how we’ve missed a proper chip. These are crisp on the outside, and fluffy on the inside. The burgers are filling and tasty. The chicken comes spiced with cajun and the beefburger is plump and juicy, and clearly home-made.

We are feeling decadent and Saturday night-ish and so have gone for extras – bacon in both and cheese in the beefburger.

By the end of our meal, Dish Detective is absolutely stuffed.

It’s an excellent weekend treat, and far from what you can easily knock up yourself.

We know that eating pub grub in your living room from a tray in front of the telly on a Saturday night will never be as good as going to a busy pub.

But we hope that it at least helps them tick along until we can all be back there again.

We are dreaming of that day – where we can see friends with rosy cheeks, clink full glasses, and end up with empty plates and stuffed bellies.

Sara and Oli please keep on going, the end is in sight.

Dish Detective urges everyone who can to support their local – wherever they are – in any way they can during these troubling times.

The Roebuck Inn, Wickham

Tel: 01329 832084

Food: 4/5

Value: 4/5