The Royal Oak, Clapham North

I don't know what on earth has happened to this place. The staff used to be nice, the food was great (especially their infamous Sunday roasts) and it was an all round good pub.

We went for lunch on Sunday and arrived early (about 12.45). There were about ten other people in the pub. At 1.15 we ordered food, including two beef roasts. after forty minutes of waiting for our food we were told they'd run out of beef. Clearly we should have been told this when we ordered. By then it was too late to go anywhere else for lunch so we had to make do with what was available, which turned up stone cold. The table next to us were told they couldn't even order food because the kitchen weren't taking any more orders and they had to lunch on bags of crisps. There can't have been more than forty people in the pub in total ... how difficult is it to cook enough meat and serve up roast dinners? The place used to be rammed and everyone got fed. When we were told they'd also run out of Guinness we gave up and left without paying.

I'm never going back there. There are too many excellent pubs in Clapham to get away with shoddy service, incompetent management of the kitchen and bad stock control. All we can hope is that it gets sold to a team of staff who know what they're doing, and soon.

1 Sep 2008 10:17