THE BARN, Central Milton Keynes

This used to be the place for a nice cheap summer lunch. Sitting outside in the beer garden with a pint and a burger was a summer ritual we all used to look forward to. What the fuck happened?

If I was going to give The Barn the benefit of the doubt I'd say that the menu hasn't changed all that much in the past ten years, but the choice of places to eat around MK and the quality of pub grub at places like The Slug And Lettuce have thrown The Barn's inadequacies into stark relief. But frankly I'd be talking bollocks. The fact is that The Barn has recently been responsible for some of the shittiest food and service I've experienced in years. So fuck the past, here's what you can expect now.

You enter the dingy interior and walk past the clientele who seem to consist of depressed travelling salesmen living in the attached Travelodge behind the pub, their lecherous eyes follow your partner with barely feigned desperation.

You reach the bar and wait for the single bartender to serve the only other person standing there. For some reason regardless of the fact that there are several other members of staff milling around including the hatchet-faced manager, this takes forty minutes.

You finally get your pint and check out the menu. It looks like every other pub grub menu you've ever seen, assuming that you live some time in the 1970's. Pie and chips, chips, peas and chips, burger and chips, chips and burger etc. You look for Spam but realise that would probably be a bit avant-garde.

You decide to have a burger, your partner chooses fish and chips and a Caesar salad. The manager insists on telling you what is in a Caesar salad. You say you don't care, she says lots of people complain when they get it and there aren't any tomatoes, you ask why she doesn't put tomatoes in it then. She looks at you like you're mad because clearly she hates her life and everything in it including tomatoes.

You've been here before, so you walk to the end of the bar and pick up some cutlery and condiments. You understand that under normal circumstances these would be brought to your table with your food but having been stung before by that assumption you remember you are eating in a throwback to a simpler time where such concepts as customer service hadn't been invented.

You pick up your sachets of generic ketchup and vinegar and grab your cutlery. None of it matches, and most of it's dirty but at least it's not plastic. Well, most of it anyway.

Off you go to the beer garden to wait for your food. I don't want to review the garden itself but it's a hit and miss affair. On one hand, the large umbrellas and picnic tables make it one of the few genuinely smoker-friendly pubs in Milton Keynes. On the other hand, the tables only seat six and are bolted to the floor so if your party consists of more than that number you're going to spend the night with your back to at least some of your friends. Also the umbrellas are bolted on and block out 90% of any sun you get so unless they take them down in the summer or you’ve brought a bolt cutter be prepared to sit out there in perpetual shade.

And then you wait. What happens next is down to blind luck. The Barn is synonymous with inconsistency of service. I've had meals there that have arrived freshly cooked and piping hot in a timely manner - I've also had to wait over an hour and remind staff of my order only to have it turn up burnt, cold and not resembling anything I actually asked for. This doesn't seem to be dependent on the time of day or the number of customers. Some days, the place just decides it really doesn't give a shit.

But let's assume that today someone reminded them that they need your patronage to exist and they decide to actually give you your food. The waitress turns up and with a look of mild boredom dumps your plates in front of you.

The fish and chips aren't bad. The fish is about as good as a mid-range deep fried piece of frozen cod gets. The batter's crispy and golden, the fish is tender and white, and the portions are neither offensively gargantuan or stupidly microscopic. It's a perfectly reasonable bit of fish. If you're lucky there might even be a bit of lemon on the plate and someone's clearly tried to make an effort with the small pile of desiccated peas topped off with a sprig of dried up parsley.

The chips aren't hot but they're not cold and whilst not crispy they aren't floppy either, they're perfectly fine reconstituted frozen potato lumps and they're okay.

The salad isn't a Caesar salad but a green salad with pretentions. But as promised there are no tomatoes, so you can't say they didn't warn you. All in all you think it's not a bad £8 plate of food. It's not special in any way whatsoever, but it's not bad. In fact the best way to look at it is that for £8 you're not going to complain. You're not going to actually choose to eat there ever again, but you're not going to throw it at anyone.

The Burger is a different story. It seems that every time I eat at The Barn their burger gets a little bit worse. There was a time when it did a pretty nice one but it seems that years of cost- and corner-cutting have taken their toll until we are left with the cheapest, saddest excuse for a burger currently available in MK. I can in all sincerity say that the burgers served at your local kebab van are infinitely tastier, fresher and healthier than the one you'll get at The Barn.

The Bun is invariably stale. One would think that there must be a magic slot sometime during the day when the buns are fresh, but no. On the bun sits two leaves of lettuce and a slice of tomato that the chef obviously scraped off his shoe having picked them up stomping over someone's allotment on the way to work, three days ago.

And on top of these sits... you know, I have no idea what it is. My aunt had a Great Dane and she used to feed it this really cheap bargain basement dog food. It was minced so finely there was no texture to it - just a dull gray paste that smelt vaguely of liver. I swear if you sliced off a circle of that shit, baked it for a day then left it in a cupboard for a week before microwaving it lukewarm and, shoving a lump of plastic cheese on top, stuck it in a stale bun you'd have The Barn's sorry excuse for a burger. It really is that crap.

Other things to avoid include the steak which is always overdone and tastes vaguely of silage, the Sunday Roast - which as far as I can tell is usually some sort of shoe - and the Beef and Ale Pie which contains neither.

In short, don't eat here unless you absolutely have to - and if that happens, consider other options like faking your own death or charging headlong into a bus.

One line review:
A slightly less pleasant dining experience than your average Bukkake.