The Castle, Walthamstow

Firstly, I would like to introduce myself and my sister, Ross and Ria. We are the owners of The Castle in the Village Ltd. (The Castle Gastro Pub). This is the first and last time I will be writing in response to comments regarding The Castle, so I hope what I write will answer any questions.

I love the concept of the review sites. I would love to use constructive criticism from these sites to better my business and give people what they want. If we could use genuine feedback to create and improve our menu and service it would be fantastic. We have received comments in the past and with some I agree, it has helped us grow, thank you. This advice benefits everyone, the community that frequent the pub and us. We have read and heard comments and it has helped us to make the business better and more efficient. The Castle is now a thriving family friendly food pub which is a stark contrast to three years ago, before we took over.

Unfortunately these sites can provide platform for fake, malicious and sometimes ridiculous reviews that are not always the truth. This is a shame. I find it disturbing that anyone would take to a review site to talk about a member of staffs physical appearance, one reviewer mentions �the manager with the pretentious awful moustache�. This quite frankly is not acceptable. This reviewer is known to The Castle and was asked to leave due to her drunken behaviour and foul language towards staff.

I am not saying we are always perfect, mistakes happen, but we do strive for excellence and I believe we provide good quality food at a reasonable price. All our meat is free range, our vegetables are delivered daily and our menu is produced by us fresh. Nothing bought in ready made, nothing frozen. Every dish has been designed by our Chefs, from the Burger recipe to the Cheese Sauce on your pasta. We even pipe our own Sausage mix from a recipe our Head Chef James created. How many Gastro pubs could say that?

I would like to advise booking on a Sunday for a roast as it does get extremely busy. We will always try to accommodate anyone that hasn�t pre-booked but we may not always be able to find a table for you immediately. At peak times we can have up to 90 -100 customers in at any one time, so it may take 30-45 minutes from ordering to receive your food. Nothing is precooked the night before and reheated like many other establishments do. We cook our meat to order.

We have recently changed our wet offering, so far these choices seem to have gone down well. Please let us know what you think.

I felt obliged to write this response today out of respect for our staff. The kitchen team especially work extremely long hours and are passionate about getting it right. It�s not on for business rivals and drunken fools to condemn the work they do.

Ross Newham
The Castle

thecastlegastropub.co.uk

11 Jan 2012 16:54