Carpenters Arms, Cambridge — Restaurant in Cambridge

Two of us came in at midday on a Friday for lunch and were the only people there, aside from one girl behind the bar and one other customer. You order at the bar. We took the lunch deal with 'sandos' and tater tots and drink. Told our order couldn't be taken until we could provide a table number. That's fine, except... the place was empty but even pointing to our preferred table from where we were standing at the bar wasn't good enough; we had to walk across the pub to pick a table and provide the exact number before we could proceed. No problem, a tad odd but we brush it off. My friend was then told not to take cutlery set from the nearby counter on the way to our table. The cutlery was brought to us 10 minutes later. ? The food took 30 minutes to arrive. (Again: empty pub). The sandos were cold. We asked for ketchup for the tater tots to be met with "we don't do that here" and that the only condiments available were those listed on the menu. (There was nothing as such listed on the menu). We requested vinegar instead and were told they didn't do that either, but she would see if there was any in the kitchen. A small amount of malt vinegar is then brought out to us in a bowl...??

A bizarre experience and a massive shame. I've frequented this place for years as it's one of my favourite pubs for beer and pizza and atmosphere but this experience was...

Disappointing food and service. My colleagues and I have been using the carpenters arms for lunch for the last 3 years. The service and food have always been really good up until the last 6 weeks.

We have noticed a decline in the speed of service and the amount of toppings on the pizza today was a joke. On a large mushroom pizza there were 3 very small slices of mushroom, which meant the majority of the pizza slices were just cheese and tomato...

We pointed this out to the server and the reasons given were 1. "ingredients cost money" and 2. "We have the chef from head office here and he is setting the standard of how many toppings should be used".

We can only assume that the standard he is setting is a lot lower than it has been previously as a cost saving exercise. How much does it really cost in ingredients to make a pizza which is charged at £14?

We were then also told that we should be booking and can't expect fast service if 9 of us turn up as walk ins at lunch time (even though there were no other customers). We have been going here regularly for 3 years and never once been told we should book. We used to have no issue with turning up ordering and all eating in much less than 1 hour. Today 2 of my colleagues got their pizza's so late they had to take them back in boxes to our office so they could eat them as we had run...

Been here many many times and always loved it but my last visit completely ruined my opinion of this establishment. They used to have a great lunchtime deal which meant you could get a small pizza and a pint for £8 - the pizza was delicious & affordable so that’s what kept bringing us back. The service was never great to be honest, I found one member of staff in particular has always had a bad attitude and I felt she’s spoken to me on numerous occasions with a condescending tone. I overlooked this because I enjoyed the pizza, venue and games available to play. What has completely shifted my view is the new menu with “pizza sandos”… they are horrendous. It took so much longer for the food to come out, the order was completely wrong, it was more expensive and simply not nice. Both mine and my friend had ordered the same thing and both of ours ended up having bacon on it when it wasn’t meant to - which for my friend who doesn’t eat pork it was very upsetting as she realised after taking a bite. I had also asked for ketchup and one waitress said they had none but I had overheard another customer ask & another waitress said she would bring some for them… I questioned it and surprise surprise I got ketchup (I mean what pub doesn’t have ketchup?). I am truly disappointed by the changes, I will miss what...