The Priory Arms, Stockwell

Our family has been coming to this pub in various group sizes for several years. When there is a larger group of us we book the upstairs room, which we did yesterday because there were 25 of us. Our orders were emailed to the manager by Friday afternoon at his request because, he explained, they probably hadn't even served 25 dinners the previous week in total. When I called the manager on Friday to double check he'd received my email with the orders he at that point told me the pub had changed hands and the dinners were 'different'. When I queried this he qualified it by saying people had said they were 'better'. I was busy and should have linked the two statements up. If they were 'better' why were they serving less than 25 of them? The pub was renowned for it's roasts and always packed on a Sunday. Alarm bells should also have rang when we got up to the room and had to sort the table out ourselves because, despite having 25 lunch orders they hadn't set out 25 place settings (???). The room was booked for 1.30 and it was getting on for 2.30 before anyone got any food. When it did start coming there were huge gaps in anyone appearing with more meals - some people had finished eating theirs 20 minutes ago while people were still waiting to be served. Despite me giving them a detailed list of dinners matched to people's names they still got it wrong but tried to insist it was our mistake! Obviously I said can you bring up my list and then I can point to the people who've had what so I can demonstrate to you that you're bringing the wrong meals up. He WOULD NOT bring me my list, was really stroppy and asked how many dinners were still left, so we told him it was 7 dinners - 4 lamb, 1 chicken, 1 vegetarian and 1 beef. He disappeared and came back up five minutes later with 2 beef! I just cannot understand how they could have found it so hard to get such a simple thing right. It's not like they were busy with other customers because the pub was dead. Had we just walked in on spec I could have understood the disorganisation but they had known since Friday. With regards to the dinners when they did actually arrive the way in which they were 'different' to how they used to be was that they were smaller, of inferior quality and in my case, cold. I think the chef heard me say this because some of the later dinners were volcanically hot and had clearly been microwaved. Unbelievably, to add insult to injury, the guy who'd refused bring up my list to check the dinners and had got angry at us for his because HE had got the orders wrong was overheard on the stairs by my brother-in-law to say "I'm not going up there again because if I do I'll deck one of them". It just became this surreal experience - not enough chairs for all the diners, waiting ridiculous amounts of time for food, wrong orders and them trying to blame us as the customers for the appalling hash they were making of it. When I complained to the manager I advised him to find the women who used to do the Sunday roasts and beg them on bended knee to come back, and to the new owner, if you're reading this, I'm repeating that advise here. Those 3 lads running that pub that day just could not cope. The manager's response to my complaint was - unsurprisingly - totally unacceptable. His reply to my pointing out how far downhill the roasts and service had gone was that the last owner had gone bankrupt (is it appropriate to tell people that and how is it relevant?) and that they are 'packed' during the week. As the owner of a pub, you need to be 'packed' every day of the week including Sunday, as this pub used to be. It isn't for the reasons I've explained above. Finally, in response to me pointing out how dead and empty the pub was the manager countered that people don't go out for roasts in August (they do). It was the 8th September.

9 Sep 2013 19:14

The Priory Arms, Stockwell

Our family has been coming to this pub in various group sizes for several years. When there is a larger group of us we book the upstairs room, which we did yesterday because there were 25 of us. Our orders were emailed to the manager by Friday afternoon at his request because, he explained, they probably hadn't even served 25 dinners the previous week in total. When I called the manager on Friday to double check he'd received my email with the orders he at that point told me the pub had changed hands and the dinners were 'different'. When I queried this he qualified it by saying people had said they were 'better'. I was busy and should have linked the two statements up. If they were 'better' why were they serving less than 25 of them? The pub was renowned for it's roasts and always packed on a Sunday. Alarm bells should also have rang when we got up to the room and had to sort the table out ourselves because, despite having 25 lunch orders they hadn't set out 25 place settings (???). The room was booked for 1.30 and it was getting on for 2.30 before anyone got any food. When it did start coming there were huge gaps in anyone appearing with more meals - some people had finished eating theirs 20 minutes ago while people were still waiting to be served. Despite me giving them a detailed list of dinners matched to people's names they still got it wrong but tried to insist it was our mistake! Obviously I said can you bring up my list and then I can point to the people who've had what so I can demonstrate to you that you're bringing the wrong meals up. He WOULD NOT bring me my list, was really stroppy and asked how many dinners were still left, so we told him it was 7 dinners - 4 lamb, 1 chicken, 1 vegetarian and 1 beef. He disappeared and came back up five minutes later with 2 beef! I just cannot understand how they could have found it so hard to get such a simple thing right. It's not like they were busy with other customers because the pub was dead. Had we just walked in on spec I could have understood the disorganisation but they had known since Friday. With regards to the dinners when they did actually arrive the way in which they were 'different' to how they used to be was that they were smaller, of inferior quality and in my case, cold. I think the chef heard me say this because some of the later dinners were volcanically hot and had clearly been microwaved. Unbelievably, to add insult to injury, the guy who'd refused bring up my list to check the dinners and had got angry at us for his because HE had got the orders wrong was overheard on the stairs by my brother-in-law to say "I'm not going up there again because if I do I'll deck one of them". It just became this surreal experience - not enough chairs for all the diners, waiting ridiculous amounts of time for food, wrong orders and them trying to blame us as the customers for the appalling hash they were making of it. When I complained to the manager I advised him to find the women who used to do the Sunday roasts and beg them on bended knee to come back, and to the new owner, if you're reading this, I'm repeating that advise here. Those 3 lads running that pub that day just could not cope. The manager's response to my complaint was - unsurprisingly - totally unacceptable. His reply to my pointing out how far downhill the roasts and service had gone was that the last owner had gone bankrupt (is it appropriate to tell people that and how is it relevant?) and that they are 'packed' during the week. As the owner of a pub, you need to be 'packed' every day of the week including Sunday, as this pub used to be. It isn't for the reasons I've explained above. Finally, in response to me pointing out how dead and empty the pub was the manager countered that people don't go out for roasts in August (they do). It was the 8th September.

9 Sep 2013 19:14