The Lavender, Vauxhall

I had to register just to post about this place. Now called the Black Dog, since its recent refurbishment it looks good, and the food is good (though I don't know why they've discarded the pizzas!) Two things make this a bad place though:
1) The all too often poorly kept beer. Lagers often flat, or pumped full of gas; good name real ales, but that are so like dishwater we've returned them innumerable times and now given up; ciders that suddenly turn bad.
2) What tops this off though is the attitude of the guy who seems to be the manager, or acts like he is. Rest of the staff are fine but he's regularly smug and sarcastic in dealing with you, and instead of sorting out the clearly-wrong beer both in the short and long-run, and apologising, often questions your complaints (like we want to take our chosen beer back every time we order?!). A recent visit culminated in him suggesting if we don't like it, we should go to another pub. On this note, he is for once correct - why have we been turning up, giving this pub a go to be our regular, and filling his coffers when we can go to better ones?

A good pub gone bad, and that could be good again with tweaks in beer-keeping, attitude and/or presence of certain bar staff.

11 Jul 2010 12:23