Smugglers Inn — Restaurant in England

Food was nice. That's where it ended for us. Passive waiting staff who seemed to be in a rush to take order and payment so they could get back to their drinks/chats with the locals at the bar. It's a pub that you have to wait to be seated, that's cool and after 5 minutes we were seated in the mostly empty pub. Then once ordered food insisted we paid before the food arrived and a card machine was instantly rushed to our table. The lady insisting took 3 minutes to get those words out and blushed bright red whilst doing it. Funnily no one else had to pay upfront Would've expected this in a mcdonalds/weatherspoons but not a wait to be seated restaurant/pub. Either way no problem but left me no avenue to leave them the 20 pound tip which my family and I always insist on. Glad they made that desicion for me. Upon leaving we took our empty glasses to the bar and said thankyou ,not even a response what looked like a snotty landlord. Friends and family now won't be planning their next trip there. Verdict,= nice food Abhorrent customer service Clicky local Royston vasey pub and it's situated quite rightly where it belongs. In the dark ages

My reply after the owners reply;

Your response warrants my review. Yes, food was great and served quickly. The service was terrible and the way you ( and now you admit) assumed we'd not pay.... says it all. Like i said, didnt mind paying upfront, it was the manner in which i was asked by your young waitress who was bright red with embarrassment and stuttering incoherently. I'm sorry you've had scum in trying to run off. Treat everyone with that demeanor and you'll be back to running no business. Instead of protecting against those issues, why not get your staff to be a little outward looking. You have a unmanned reception area while they're at the bar yapping and looking at us while we stood there... it speaks volumes. Why not get one of them to man the door for customers coming in?....and going out without paying! I'm in business, i do understand. But your utter lack of grasp of what I'm trying to say, your angry reply to my review and the countless others on TripAdvisor saying the same just puts only one thing to blame, not your staff, not your lovely...

What a bad bad experience we had. We booked for a family meal for 7 of us for 19:30 we arrived to a queue at the bar and no staff to show us to the table after 10 mins we intercepted one of the serving staff who said she will get someone so show us to our table. The young lad eventually showed us to are table and offered to take our drinks order but then returned and apologised but they were not doing table service that night and we would have to order at the bar. I then spent a further 15 mins in the queue to get our drinks order. I requested if we could put the drinks on a table with our food, this was accepted and I said I would return with our food order upon I was informed that the kitchen was closing in 2 mins when I challenged this stating that we had booked and was not a walk in the only response I got from the girl that served me was what time did we book for and when I told her and explained that we had been there for the last half an hour and have been in the queue for 15 mins to get served and when I complained about it I got no response and she started serving another person. After returning to our table the young lad was taking the order for the table adjacent to us who had arrived after us we requested he take our order because my daughter had produced our own list of what we wanted. Then another one of the waiting staff appeared to take our order. Then to top it off my starter came with my main course. All I can say is that the food was okay considering all the above comments.I was amazed also that they held a quiz night when we had just got our meals there was no mention of this when booking. My suggestion to the owners that the Web Site be more informative and that if there is entertainment of any sort on the date of the booking it informs you. Also there needs to be more bar staff to cope...

What a bad bad experience we had.|We booked for a family meal for 7 of us for 19:30 we arrived to a queue at the bar and no staff to show us to the table after 10 mins we intercepted one of the serving staff who said she will get someone so show us to our table. The young lad eventually showed us to are table and offered to take our drinks order but then returned and apologised but they were not doing table service that night and we would have to order at the bar. I then spent a further 15 mins in the queue to get our drinks order.|I requested if we could put the drinks on a table with our food, this was accepted and I said I would return with our food order upon I was informed that the kitchen was closing in 2 mins when I challenged this stating that we had booked and was not a walk in the only response I got from the girl that served me was what time did we book for and when I told her and explained that we had been there for the last half an hour and have been in the queue for 15 mins to get served and when I complained about it I got no response and she started serving another person. After returning to our table the young lad was taking the order for the table adjacent to us who had arrived after us we requested he take our order because my daughter had produced our own list of what we wanted. Then another one of the waiting staff appeared to take our order. Then to top it off my starter came with my main course. All I can say is that the food was okay considering all the above comments.I was amazed also that they held a quiz night when we had just got our meals there was no mention of this when booking.|My suggestion to the owners that the Web Site be more informative and that if there is entertainment of any sort on the date of the booking it informs you. Also there needs to be more bar staff to cope...