New dawn for Black Country pub after major refurbishment

A popular pub and restaurant is ready to welcome customers back through its doors after undergoing a major refurbishment.

The Round Oak Stonehouse in Merry Hill will open at midday on Friday, November 13 after more than three weeks of closure for the refurbishment, which has seen £500,000 invested.

The work has included a full update of the bar area, with new pumps installed and the restaurant lowered onto one floor and a function room used to extend the dining room, as well as fresh new equipment for pizzas and the popular carvery.

Ahead of the reopening on November 13, a soft launch was held at the Round Oak on November 12, with 25 per cent off all mains.

General manager John Griffiths spoke about the work that had gone into the refurbishment.

He said: “We’ve been closed around about three weeks and had the builders in pretty much working around the clock, while the team have all been off for a couple of weeks.

“We've all been back in for training since Tuesday and doing on-site training today, so there’s a little bit of a difference to the place.

“It was a top to bottom, inside and out refurbishment and they’ve spent more than half a million pounds on the place.”

He said he and the staff were excited to be able to reopen the pub and welcome people back and spoke about what people could expect.

He said: “On Friday at 12pm we open and then, after that, we're back open as normal for breakfast from 9am, food service from 3pm to 9pm every day and it is still the same great Round Oak, although they've made it very, very fancy and very popular.

“It's also still the same team and we've added a couple of little additions into the team, just to bulk it up a little bit, as well as a couple of extra chefs, but it's still the same amazing food we were doing before.

“We have had a menu refresher and there are some great new items to go on there, and we're also launched with the festive menus, which will be launching as of today too.”