The Queens Hotel, Crouch End

The queens could be a typical gastro but actually its not. The dining room at the back is very lovely, good food and nice friendly service and the pub at the front seems to remain just that! A pub! And a good one at that. Seems to me its a good local at the front and a nice place for food at the back. Will definitely be going back.

1 Nov 2010 15:27

The Water Poet, Shoreditch

This place has a few ok reviews so i was surprised they managed to get it quite so wrong yesterday!
I met with 19 friends for sunday lunch and can only say not only will we never be returning but we'll do our best to ensure nobody else puts themselves through such an awful experience.
The whole afternoon can only be described as the height of incompetence.
It started with warm flat beer when we arrived in the bar (which if the ample bar staff knew how to change they were too busy bitching about their boss to do so) continued as we had to wait for our heater to be turned on for over an hour. Then was made worse by the fact that although we asked to order 3/4 times by the time we actually got to they had run out of almost all food! Each time our waitress took our order she would disappear for 10 minutes then return to tell us they had run out of yet another dish. We ordered 3 times and each time had to change our choice, at the end of it only 3 dishes on the menu where available. Our waitresses response "you should have been told when you booked we run out of food at 2pm every week!" What a ridiculous thing to say, if you run out of food every week you order more! Common sense anyone!!
A vegan dish was ordered and came with buttered cabbage and yorkshire pudding, surely if you work in food you understand what vegan means?
And half of our dishes came replacement accompaniments that we didn't want.
The whole ordeal was meant to be made better by 20% off the bill but that didn't cut it as the bill arrived without being asked for and instead of the dessert menu! When we asked for pudding we were told "there is no more food"!
This place is run so badly incompetent is not a strong enough word. They don't know what they're doing to such an extent i'm supprised they even know how to open the door! In fact it's a shame they do, it'd be better kept shut!

1 Nov 2010 14:36