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| - Rest assured my rating is strictly for the food, since that is most important to me and also because I ran out of stars to subtract for other mistakes in the service/atmosphere.
Keeping this story as brief as I can...
We made reservations for 10 for my friend's birthday based on the great yelp reviews and proximity to her work. We were seated in a little nook in the back next to the kitchen where half our table was forced to wear jackets because of the back door being opened/closed for employee smoke breaks - don't forget the accompanying stench of tobacco to boot. (You have a big group where you can expect a large bill and you give them the worst seats in the house?!) Okay. Sure. Moving on.
Next up, drinks. I had whichever beer was on rotation - an IPA, and the boyfriend had the stout. Both were basic beers- mildly flavoured water. Neither were anything special. My birthday-friend had a dark and stormy, it tasted like the type you get at a cheap place, too much ice that ended up really watering down the drink and the rum was unnoticeable. No one had praise for their own selections.
Okay how about some good 'ol high-end British pub food to wash down that beer? Snack time! I LOVE pork scratching. These were not pork scratchings. I'm pretty sure it was charcoal with a good helping of unrendered fat. (How they managed to burn these with some pieces not cooked is one of the biggest marvels of the night, broken tooth jokes were aplenty.) I had originally wanted a sausage roll but they were sold out. Okay, how about the Scotch eggs? Out-of-the-fridge cold with an overcooked egg. The fish croquettes were the best... but neither memorable or repeatable.
This was the worst dinner I have had in a while and we hadn't even received the entrees. Let the shit-storm continue!
My birthday-friend and another ordered the steak: one asked for rare, the other medium. However they both received medium. I had a bite.. Very dry, under seasoned, under seared, and not a very good cut of meat to begin with. I kept prompting her to send it back but she didn't want to waste food.
I had the Peppered Beef and Stilton Pudding. The meat was actually nice. The roasted veggies also delicious! They managed to not fuck up BRAISING & ROASTING. Congrats guys, you passed day 1 of chef school. However the crust was RAW (somebody needs to get Ramsey in here) The gravy was good and actually greatly improved the Hand Chopped Burger that the boyfriend had. He requested it med-rare and it was also served medium, more annoyingly the bun was stale.(#&%$ SERIOUSLY.) Hence the gravy was used as a dip. Maybe they should serve it like that.
Another at the table ordered the Welsh Rabbit since he grew up eating them, after he couldn't stomach it everyone had a bite and it actually became the joke of the table (replacing the scratching! I didn't think it was possible to top that!).
We all shared a laugh at the $10 for milk and cookies, are they made of gold?
The place does look very nice, especially on a cold night. I made sure the boys went to the bathroom to see the urinals. The service was... Well, we had a larger group than anticipated since it was a birthday party and people decided to "surprise" my friend. They weren't allowed to pull up a chair and ended up having to sit at the bar. There was physical room at the table, we started squishing the chairs together but were stopped by the manager(? I'm assuming since he wasn't our server) He let us know after dinner we could all sit together upstairs for drinks. That's nice, I guess, it was our fault anyways. I wish they could have been more accommodating. However upstairs never happened since dinner took over an hour, and no one even wanted another drink here with the lack of good options.
Otherwise service was okay, not friendly, not distant; the water was refilled often enough. I never had a chance to complain about my food as the plates weren't cleared until we had paid & were putting on coats. I really didn't know where to start either. "How was everything?" "Absolutely British! You guys really know how to live up to the stereotype of terrible food!" "Oh, thank you, it's quite hard to do something this bad, and charge you this much! We threw in the cold breeze and split up your party just to guarantee your friend a bad birthday dinner."
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