The North Star, Ealing

I went to the North Star last Sunday (19th April) to catch up with some friends for lunch. My friends went for the roast (which they said was tough and stringy), and I went for a lighter option: Humous with crudites and flatbread. The portion of carrots and cucumber sticks was generous, as was the 5-6 strips of flatbread, but the humous came in a teeny tiny ketchup pot.

Obviously, I finished the humous very quickly and politely asked the passing waiter whether it'd be possible to get a cheeky top-up. He said to me: "That's the portion." When I explained that the portion ratio was all wrong, he just stared blankly and said, "That's the portion. You'll have to pay for more." When I asked to see a manager, he said "Okay," and then failed to send anyone out to speak to me.

Not undeterred, I went and sought out the manager (turned out to be an assistant manager). He said the same thing ("That's the portion") but admitted that it was an "epic fail" for the waiter not to have alerted him to the issue when I'd asked to see someone. I explained that I lived in Ealing, came to this pub often with friends and was disappointed that their customer service could not be altered slightly for a bit of humous (which probably equates to, at best, a cost of 25p to them).

Don't know about the drinks - we had bottled Magners - but I will not be returning to the North Star. There are plenty of other places in Ealing to go. I would suggest that the manager of this pub rethinks his/her customer service strategy which currently seems to be: "The customer is always wrong."

21 Apr 2009 12:53