The Red Lion — Restaurant in Dacorum

Visited for the first and last time today…. It was an awful experience from start to finish. We had a table booked at 4:15 and left the restaurant at 8:10 due to the worst service I have experienced anywhere. We ordered drinks in the first few minutes of sitting at the table to wait 45 minutes for them to arrive and get several wrong along with drinks that we did not even order (which were also added to the bill). We then ordered food and waited an extremely long time for starters to arrive with some missing (these were then an extra 20 minute wait). We had different members of staff come over 3 times to inform us we had ordered food they did not have in stock and that we needed to change them - even though this was an hour after originally ordering. We then waited a long time for our mains, which the cauliflower cheese came uncooked to the table and was cold - we had to ask for it to be cooked. There was a certain staff member who was really annoyed that we kept having to correct our orders and slammed a dish on our table and said ‘I’ll leave this here as I am busy and do not have the time’ - even though the dish she put down was not part of our order in the first place. This was extremely rude and made us all feel uncomfortable. When asking for the bill we asked several members of staff, which took half an hour to have a card machine with us - we were asking, being told yes and then nothing. Apart from 1 member of staff (who we tipped individually) were acting as though they had no idea what they were doing and had no manners what so ever. Our service charge was £60 - which was requested to be taken off because the service we had was diabolical, in-fact it was embarrassing that any member of staff thought it would be okay to leave that on the bill. When we asked for it to be taken off we were told the manager has to confirm and that he would be over - we could see the manager who was too shy to come to the table - which he never did. NEVER AGAIN will myself or the other 9 people at my table be going back here. Disgraceful with a rating of 1/10 doesn’t even cut the service of our meal. For 15 people to be running and serving a restaurant and only 1 be polite to us tells you everything you...

A group of 10 of us booked a meal here as a repeat of previous visits. We liked this venue as it has real ale on draught ( London Pride). Things started to go wrong when we could not be served this as it was not ready to go and was informed by the manager that it need to rest for 24 hours after being laid down. Yes but most publicans do this in time so as one barrel finishes another is ready to go. Next up was we have run out of Bombay Sapphire, pretty much a standard these days. Next no flavoured gins, again a standard these days. Once sat down we all began to complain about the temperature in the restaurant. Upon asking could it be turned up we were informed that it was as warm as it was going to get due to the heating not working 100%. We asked to speak to the manager which we did and he explained he had only been manager for 5 weeks and it wasn’t his fault. When we said his stock levels were poor he batted these comments away as a matter of fact and from my point of view could care a less. When we pointed out people sitting in a restaurant with there coats on again he suggested it was as good as it gets. We suggested to him that we would expect some sort of compensation for having to dine in such uncomfortable conditions he said it was outside his remit to be able to offer anything. I was already at that point to walk but others in the party were prepared to endure it. When speaking to the staff about our conversation with the manager they didn’t seem surprised that he had done nothing to address our problems. So my advice to others thinking of spending a night there is to check the weather forecast and.go on a warm day, don’t be to particular about what you would like to drink, infact probably take your own. My advice to the Oakman Inns is give your managers power to resolve issues at source or get rid of them. Either way I and my party of 10 won’t be back unless we have cast iron guarantees that they have done something to address this diabolical way of dealing with customers. I should add that the service staff did a fantastic job in trying to recover...

We have been eating at this pub for over 10 years and never had any problems until now. Since the recent management change we have been in twice and had problems with our food both times. The first of these occasions we ordered a chocolate brownie which was completely uncooked very sloppy like batter almost and made me feel sick but I thought perhaps it was just me or a one off and didn't make a fuss. On the second occasion we were in we had to send one meal back four times because they got the order wrong. The sauce was nothing like you would expect from a peppercorn sauce - it didn't taste like it had any peppercorn in it at all. When they first brought the steak out, which we ordered medium rare what they served was a well cooked steak so we sent it back. What they brought back didn't look like it was cooked at all . It was cold and tasted awful. Plus they sent chips when we specifically asked for extra salad instead because the person it was ordered for cannot eat the chips because of a dietary issue. We refused to pay for the meal. We also sent back the chocolate brownies which looked completely uncooked and were cold, basically slop and nothing like a chocolate brownie. The drinks were okay and the couple of other things we ordered were okay but nothing any of us would go back for. Staff were friendly and polite. It is honestly a massive disappointment because we've been visiting this pub for so many years and it is not cheap. We were looking forward to a nice meal and honestly we wish we hadn't bothered. We went home and made our own desserts and enjoyed it much more. I doubt we'll be going back, massively...