The Red Lion, Teddington

After looking at a few places in the Twickenham/Teddington area, myself and a friend decided the Red Lion would be the perfect place to hold our 30th Birthday Party. We organised everything and booked it up but unfortunately it didn't go quite to plan. We were not told initially that although the room was free we would have to order our buffet through the pub. It seemed a little on the expensive side but we had a �300 budget for this (to cater for around 60 people) and tried to negotiate some kind of menu based on this with the chef, who did not seem keen at all to budge on his menu... We later went down to see the manager as our calls were not being returned and he agreed that we could come to an agreement regarding food to suit said budget and would get back to us when he had spoken to the chef (who was on holiday). We also discovered then that the outside decking area would not be reserved for our sole use as previously discussed but they "might" be able to reserve half. Also the late licence that we had discussed was not available either as had "already used some and had to keep some for later dates". We left a bit disappointed but hoped that the party would go ahead as planned. We waited for a call from them and rang several times, each time being told that we would be called back, but never heard anything. A couple of weeks before the party we had had enough and decided to change the venue....which we are so glad we did as we never got our call back until the day before the party!! Not very practical or professional! On the plus side though we had a fantastic party with our 150 guests and the bar had the best night they had had all year. I just wanted to provide an insight to people interested in having their party here as it caused us quite a lot of stress to change venue etc and was very frustrating trying to deal with the staff.

24 Jun 2011 13:27