THE Water Meadow in Melksham has always been a go-to place for me and my partner, being just round the corner.

It has recently been re-branded and a new menu launched. Although still a Marston’s pub, the previous two-for-one menu was scrapped, much to our disappointment.

But the new menu looked appetising online, so we thought why not give it a go.

It was a rainy Sunday evening when we decided to go out, and we wondered about booking a table but decided against it.

When we arrived we were surprised that it was rather empty, as it usually looks very busy driving past.

We were greeted by a polite waitress who said we could have any table we wanted, but that the kitchen would be closing in one hour as they shut early on a Sunday. That explained why they were less busy than usual.

After browsing the menu for around 10 minutes we started to wonder if we were supposed to order at the bar, but just then the friendly waitress came back.

We ordered two refillable soft drinks as we thought these would be the best value for money. We were right as we both ended up getting through two and a half refills each.

To start we went for the brie dippers, served with caramelised red onion chutney and mixed leaves (£3.95) and the blue cheese dough balls, stuffed with oozing Stilton cheese and served with blue cheese dressing (£3.45).

We both really enjoyed the brie dippers which were piping hot and the cheese was beautifully melted and oozing out.

I would say these were the favourite part of my meal.

The dough balls were also very enjoyable, and were rich and tasty, although perhaps a little too filling as a starter.

For our mains, my partner decided on the 14oz T-bone steak with the Montreal brie and bacon topper, served with chips, peas, mushroom, tomato and fried onions (£14.95). Despite asking for it be cooked to medium, he was slightly disappointed as it was cooked rather unevenly, some parts appeared very well done and other parts still had blood coming out.

I went for a pizza and ordered the Smoky BBQ pizza, mozzarella, pepperoni, hickory BBQ pulled pork and a drizzle of BBQ sauce on the stuffed crust base (£9.75 plus an extra £1.50 for the stuffed crust).

After a few mouthfuls it became apparent that the crust was not stuffed with anything. After bringing this to the attention of the waitress she went to ask the chef who said it was actually a 'stuffed base', not crust. We both thought this should have been made clearer on the menu.

I began to feel that maybe I shouldn’t have ordered dough-based starters and main as I was filling up quickly. I would have liked to have seen more meat topping on the pizza, as the vast majority was dough.

We skipped pudding as we were full to the brim, and staff had started hovering around, making us feel they were trying to tell us something.

The bill came to just over £40 which we thought wasn’t too bad, but we weren’t as happy with our meal as we had been on previous visits.

Amy Pantall