The Oakhill Tavern, Beckenham

The Clarence opened last night - 9th October 2014. It's got a quite minimal look at the moment - bare floorboards and walls .. could do with a some pictures or a splash of colour. A few unusual beers on tap and the food menu looked good.

10 Oct 2014 17:21

The Ravensbury Arms, Mitcham

Beware of your valuables in this pub - there are thieves operating. My jacket was on the back of my chair whilst eating lunch. It's not until I later on that I realised my cashcard and drivers licence had been taken out of my wallet, and �1,500 cash had been drawn out of my bank account at three separate branches in Croydon that same afternoon. Be very careful.

2 Dec 2011 11:51

The Greyhound, Carshalton

Went to the restaurant here last night for dinner... and regretted it. The service was terrible. The restaurant had lots of empty tables, so you'd think the service would be fairly quick.. but no. After sitting down for about 20 minutes to be served, I went up and ordered my meal at the till and bought the drinks at the bar (glass of red wine served to me in a beer glass by miserable barman!). After ordering we waited and waited for the food.. also witnessed the chef coming out of the kitchen to tell the waitress that there were meals to be collected. There seemed to be only one waitress for a while who didn't seem to be doing much apart from walking about. Lots of other customers were getting up and trying to find out where their food was too. After about 40 minutes another waitress came out who seemed a bit more 'on the ball' and said our food was on it's way .. but still no sign of it after another 20 mins .. so she came and offered us free drinks and a free dessert and said there had been a mixup in the kitchen. I guess they were very apologetic but it was a week day evening and we'd really only gone in there for a main meal and didn't want a 3 course long drawn-out affair! Decided not to have dessert as that would have probably taken another hour to arrive so settled the bill with a 20% discount. All in all a pretty miserable experience and I won't be going here again in a hurry. The food was ok but pretty tasteless and nothing special for the price.. my partner had fish and chips (�11.50) and I had the liver (�9.95), which was quite dry. Both meals were steaming hot - which gave me the impression that they had been microwaved. It's a shame really, as the greyhound could be a really good place .. just needs someone to go in and give it a kick up the backside (so to speak)!

28 Oct 2010 10:26

The Sun, Carshalton

I've been here a couple of times now, once on the quiz night and once for sunday lunch. I agree with yummummy - the wait for food is really long! .. also there was a boy serving who was really quite useless! first he took ages to get the drinks and kept getting it wrong, then after we'd sat down and our food had eventually arrived (after about 45 mins), he came up and said that the table had already been reserved and that we weren't supposed to be sitting there. The table wasn't clearly marked as being reserved... just handwritten in small writing on the back of the wine list, so it was easily missed. He'd also written down the wrong time of the reservation. As we'd only just started eating I said he'd have to explain his mistake to the people who'd just turned up and we'd be done in 15 minutes. He obviously hadn't done this as a few of the people who had reserved came over to where we were sitting and were voicing their discontent very loudly! This was bad customer management and made us feel rushed and uncomfortable. As for the food - the roast dinner was good with a good selection of veg.. roast potatoes were a little overdone though. The waitress was polite but when handing out the cutlery, she held the knives and forks at the opposite end to the handle... which didn't really show any etiquette. There is room for improvement here .. particularly with the staff.

8 Feb 2010 13:56