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Wine List of Week: The Ragged Robin

23 July 2025 By Douglas Blyde

Douglas Blyde tells of a wobbly visit to boozer-meets-boutique-hotel, the Ragged Robin, Surrey. The wine pairing never arrives, the beetroot terrine is textured like sea cucumber and come morning, the absence of flat white is sorely felt. Still, jovial students waiter Freddie holds the floor.

The Ragged Robin review

The Ragged Robin stands opposite Broadwater Park, where, according to a local angler, carp up to 32lb are wrestled from the deep and returned to its Green Flag-winning lake. A short walk along the meadow-flanked towpath brings you into Godalming – the first town in the world to be lit by public electricity – and home to the Phillips Memorial Cloister, which honours the Titanic’s chief wireless telegraphist, who stayed at his post until the end. Nearby, Terrence Clark’s undulating wrought-iron pillars guard the Waitrose like a secular cloister of their own.

Once a tannery, then a Beefeater, Heartwood Inns has reimagined this eighteenth-century building, naming it after a wildflower, (“Lychnis flos-cuculi” in Latin). The transformation unveils what Surrey Live called a “swanky” retreat, with a spacious garden and terraces featuring Gucci-esque umbrellas, stretching out to the River Wey, and its own mooring. A Google reviewer aptly praised the setup as much for its “promise” as its “parking”.

Opened mid-June, The Ragged Robin delivers high-volume hospitality, comprising a 150-cover restaurant and bar with 100 external covers, and nineteen bedrooms, each with a vegan down duvet, sleep spray, and tasty sweet canapés, making it feel more like a boutique hotel than a traditional inn.

This marks Heartwood’s 31st pub and sixth with rooms, underscoring the company’s rapid growth, as widespread as the ragged robin plant, under CEO and Welsh rugby fanatic, Richard Ferrier, who took the helm in January 2024. In a year when one pub closes every day across Great Britain, according to the British Beer and Pub Association, Heartwood’s expansion stands as a notable outlier. Targeting 61 pubs and 500 rooms by 2027, the company is bolstered by £100 million in funding. This month saw the opening of The George & Dragon, Marlow, with sites slated for The Red Lion in Stratford-upon-Avon, The Old Crown, Great Bookham, and The Woodman, Southgate later this year. Yet service can lag behind the pace of the openings.

Drinks

Ragged Robin Surrey

The Ragged Robin may tout itself as a quintessential local, but it’s one which has mastered the fine art of straddling “family fun” and the subtler cravings of those with taste – though one can’t help wondering if the advertised “guided dog walking” isn’t really a plaintive cry for human contact, disguised in fur.

Draught ale is suitably local – Hogs Back Tongham Tea from Surrey’s own Farm Brewery leads the pack – though such local acknowledgement doesn’t happen on the wine list. Instead of a Surrey bottle, the list opens with a modest vin de pays duo from Le Pionnier (£23.50) – a brand by Les Grands Chais de France, whose turnover reportedly exceeded €1.3 billion in 2022. These casual sippers are priced at a mild double mark-up.

For those with deeper pockets, £100 lands the 2019 Lacoste-Borie, the second wine of Château Grand-Puy-Lacoste – a bottle we clocked above the bar, where heat rises, yet mysteriously un-vintaged on the printed list. On the run-up, 2023 Domaine du Prieuré Hautes, a Côtes de Beaune from the slopes above Pommard, costs an also friendly £65.50.

Sparkling fans may opt to part with £135.50 for Ruinart Blanc de Blancs NV, though the real winner lies in the gentle pricing of Nyetimber flagship 1086 at £185 – the most British of victories.

Cocktails lean playful: a hazelnut espresso martini bolstered by Illy and Finlandia vodka, with the option to upgrade the spirit for just £1. The AperNO Spritz, made with Lyre’s Italian Spritz, valiantly attempts charm for the abstinent, though frankly, its name could do with a spritz of its own.

Dishes

Ragged Robin Surrey

Heartwood, awarded the top three-star Food Made Good rating by the Sustainable Restaurant Association (June 2023), has retooled its kitchen. Out go the Beefeater-era Double-Crunch Chicken Wings, rump with Diane sauce, and skin-on chips. In comes cleaner lines and sharper thinking, under Manoj Prasad, Head of Food Development (former area chef at Brasserie Blanc) and Raymond Blanc OBE who is described on Heartwood’s official site as “the guiding light of the business and what is on the menu each season.” Even the sandwiches have been elevated: the lobster, prawn and avocado roll, served on Surrey ceramics with triple-cooked chips, is built to reassure as much as impress.

The first thing we tasted – a tray of very good, complimentary sweet canapés in the room – set an early benchmark. It wasn’t consistently matched.

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A “small plate” of free-range Scotch egg with umeboshi plum ketchup was described as such, though the sauce resembled emulsified pickle juice – a sharp, tangy foil which worked well. Croquettes of pea, broad bean and feta turned out to resemble falafel, served with chipotle mayonnaise and a brisk lemon-dressed mixed leaf salad, so much better than the vinaigrette-drenched side salad served later – a pleasing starter. The red mullet stock-based Mediterranean fish soup, served with infantile Gruyère, garlic rouille, and croutons, was, however, underpowered and commercial tasting, and the beetroot terrine – slick, pretty, but oddly textured like a polarising sea cucumber – clashed with its partners: horseradish sorbet and beetroot balsamic.

The mains, like the starters, fared best when they brought a little heat – handled with particular confidence by a kitchen team whose international backgrounds clearly inform the bolder, spiced dishes. A fillet of bream with sautéed squid, artichoke and rich bouillabaisse proved the dish of the night. An overcooked monkfish and king prawn skewer, served with a papaya salad which initially tasted faintly of standing water, thankfully actually improved with time as flavours found one another and began to sing. A heap of citrus and pine nut scented lemon ricotta ravioli was less successful – the whole thing drowned in sage and balsamic butter, made murkier by an undisciplined tangle of carrot and courgette “spaghetti” lurking beneath. And a portion of green beans early in the evening was bright and clean; a later one was sullied by fryer oil.

Despite repeated requests both in advance and on the day, no one appeared to discuss wine – so pairings never happened. There are, however, nearly thirty wines available by the glass, preserved under what appeared to be a pump-it-and-hope system. The modern, perky Rioja Blanco from Azabache and the ebulliently juicy Château Tour de Luchey Bordeaux, both chosen unguided, were nonetheless served in good condition, albeit in glasses with wet feet.

The Ragged Robin Surrey

Towards the end of dinner, as a pistachio soufflé, vivid green within, but with the volume set to 11 on almond, arrived, a manageress crouched to implore us to leave a five-star TripAdvisor review mentioning our waiter, Freddie – a polite, attentive student whose patience and good humour held the floor. She explained, if he was named, he’d be in with a chance of winning a £50 voucher. We hope he wins.

At breakfast, it was the same manageress, perhaps sleep deprived, who denied the availability of flat whites, despite them being printed on the menu, and a milk frother audibly in operation. It was also she who confirmed, with the solemnity of someone announcing the death of a monarch, that a yoghurt pot could not be ordered as a solitary item.

The same, more generous team member who had bypassed the flat white impasse was later dispatched to our room – it couldn’t wait until checkout – to bill us for them, in lieu of the complimentary filter coffee. After requesting payment, she apologised and noted that behind the tasteful refit lies a cramped staffroom where the team is expected to take their only break – 20 minutes – across a nine-hour shift. Staff must also pay for their meals. This, despite a public recruitment pitch by Heartwood which promises enhanced parental leave, a £1,500 referral bonus, birthday gifts, and cycle-to-work perks.

Last Sip

Ragged Robin Surrey

Offering fair prices, all à la carte starters under £10, and – excluding Aubrey Allen steaks – more than 80% of mains sit below £20. Still, given the volume of covers and the floor’s erratic rhythm, you wonder whether nudging prices slightly upwards might buy a little polish.

We very nearly didn’t end up here at all. Today’s review was meant to be for Constance – Adam Byatt’s new riverside outpost – until our dining companion, Andy Lynes, author of the refreshingly caustic Substack, “Smashed”, which reviews the restaurant reviewers, was struck by gout so vengeful he couldn’t leave the house. Then, inexplicably, our booking for The Ragged Robin was switched to The Ropemaker – a sister site by Fowley Island boasting a “two-for-one happy hour”. However, given that it harbours the same wine list, and an almost identical menu, the review may not have read much differently had we gone there instead.

In the end, The Ragged Robin won us over. We slept as deeply as we have in any pub, and while the team isn’t trained to the polish of, say, The PIG collection, most were genuinely warm. For all its growing pains, we’d consider returning – once the reality catches up with the promise.