The Assembly House, Kentish Town

This is a beautiful pub that has a lot of potential for becoming a magnificent, vibrant and lively space in which people can relax and socialise, if only it had the right management in place. Unfortunately, the surly and lacklustre staff bring any chance of creating a pleasant atmosphere crashing to the ground.

I have been to the Assembly House 3 times in the past year mainly due to it's size and location, each time hoping that previously my friends and I had just caught the staff on a bad day. But each time, we have been shown perfect examples of how not to run/work in a pub:

1. Last Saturday in particular, "hello", "how can I help you?", "please" and "thank you", were not in the staff's vocabulary. We were lucky to get a "yeah?". Most of the evening we were greeted with blank looks and at one point the girl who served us made rude and sarcastic remarks implying that we didn't know what we were ordering;
2. They struggled with one of the basics of working in a pub -- how to pour a decent pint. The first round of beers was flat, and when my friends complained and suggested that the gas needed changing (between us, we have around 60 years of experience working and managing pubs), the staff refused to do anything about it;
3. They generally don't care which glasses they serve your drinks in. Don't be surprised if they present you with a glass of Leffe in a regular short half pint glass because they can't be bothered to go round the corner to get the proper Leffe glass, that allows room for the head. True story;
4. They rarely look up at the people who are waiting to be served so they don't know (or care?) who's next in line. They ignore you when you try to get their attention and drift around apathetically behind the bar after finally taking your order. I once spent 30 minutes waiting to be served on a quiet Saturday night so I ended up buying two rounds at a time to reduce the amount of time I had to spend at the bar. They don't seem to see this as a problem. Meanwhile, their manager was more interested in picking out his favourite music on his ipod than attempting to serve customers;
5. Plates and empty glasses are not collected nearly often enough by the staff, and clutter up the tables;
6. Out of the three cubicles in the women's toilets, one was out of order and one didn't have a toilet seat. The hand dryer wasn't working and the water from the hot tap scalded me.

But at least the staff are consistent in their customer (dis)service.

I would never treat any customer of mine whilst working in a pub or restaurant with the lack of courtesy and respect that I have experienced from the staff at the Assembly House. I am disappointed and offended that such a beautiful building, in such a prime position is being run and staffed by inadequately trained people who give the impression that they don't want to be there and who treat their customers like rubbish. This pub would benefit greatly from getting a new set of managers and well trained staff in to realise it's full potential.

My rating is 2/10 and is purely for the qualities of the building, it's position and it's potential.

9 Feb 2009 18:30