Bakers Arms — Restaurant in Epping Forest

I have been frequenting this pub/restaurant for more than 8 years, and always ask myself why, apart from the fact that it is local. Management has changed hands several times over the years but the standard of service remains static at totally abysmal................ it is an ok place for a catch up drink with friends but the food leaves a lot to be desired...........

Visited on Saturday 20th September 2014 for dinner,basically because I had vouchers ....

Found a table and waited, as directed for someone to come and take our order, waited ,waited and nothing happened. So I went to the bar to order drinks and try to locate a menu..I stood at the bar for around 10 mins whilst the only person behind the bar seemed to become more and more frustrated with the waitressing staff who didn't seem to have a clue and were trying to sort out a cocked up booking for someone else. Eventually managed to get two glasses of wine and went and found a menu myself....

We made our meal choices and eventually, after an inordinate wait a 'waitress' came and took our order. The starters arrived after a reasonable time and were passable, mine? Scallops with black pudding and bacon was edible, the scallops were fine as was the black pudding, the bacon which should have been crisp was drowned in sauce and soggy. We waited and waited again for our plates to be cleared and the mains to arrive, eventually after a long wait they were taken away and we were served mains, steak........which had obviously been sitting pre prepared under heat lamps in the kitchen, so much so that the chips were soggy, the onions rings tough and not crisp, and the steak was just dry and unappetising.... No offer of mustard or sauces, so we eventually caught the eye of another 'waitress' and asked for some which arrived about 10 mins later....... we did our best to eat the food.

So we the waited and waited and waited and waited for the plates to be cleared, and waited some more and eventually I gave up and went to the bar and ordered another drink and dessert.

And we continued to wait for the plates to be cleared, eventually the dessert arrived with the plates from the mains still on the table......

Needless to say we did not leave a tip, the only tip I can proffer is.........get more staff and make sure they are capable of the job! Oh and it is always way too hot in there so try to visit in months when you can go outside...............

We then attempted to ask for the bill and again waited and waited, when the bill was presented we put our Tesco Vouchers on the plate and the waitress 'missed' it, she tried to process the whole bill despite the £30 vouchers and then proceeded to cancel the initial card transaction and went to the bar to 'sort it out' this took about another 20 minutes as apparently 'she hadn't done it before, despite us sitting opposite a sign that says ''use your tesco clubcard vouchers here' groan..............

Dreadful dining experience and not for the first time. We use this Premier Inn for corporate bookings and get so many complaints about the standard of food and the service it is unbelievable, I would not...

If I could give 0 stars I would, most of the service have been nice, except 1 unfortunately we had this one. Getting something uneatable and then not even apologising for it - is not great. Even if it is just 3 pounds. There have been many issues with the dinner, and I will not go into it all. Just for the side salad, I ordered - it was not communicated that there is NO salad dressing available. Since I am not a rabbit, when the salad came i thought okay they forgotten to put dressing on, it only had a bit of oil, no vinegar - nothing and having been there before they had a pretty good salad dresssing. So I asked if I could have more dressing, again it was not communicated that they have none and I got brought a jug with something which looked like a dressing and poured it over my salad - which made it uneatable, as what I got was a jug with oil with dried parsley in, so I had now salad swimming in pure oil with dry parsley. Was very unpleasant. When we communicated this, we did not even get a sorry. Just a it is not available at the moment, when we said it would have been nice to get this told when ordering the answer was it would not say at the menue as it is only at the moment. Yes I understood this, however I think the waitress should have told us that the side salad is without dressing or tell us the only dressing is pure oil with dried parsley. And at least apologise afterwards. She did also not ask how the dinner was, which probably was for the better as there been a lot of issues with it, and I really only ate it because I was hungry. We liked it there before but will not go there again. The positive was, we wanted a quiet table and the other staff did put quite some efford into in it to get us one. With the minus 5 star quality of the other service member, this turned it into 2 stars for service.

To the owner: It was not communicated at all, only afterwards. And we been there two weeks ago and had a super nice salad dressing. If we would have known that just putting oil in now with dried parsley in - I would have not ordered as simple as is. As eating oil with parsley is not nice. Also communicating it when I said it is uneatable now saying this is all we have available now is different to what you say. And it should be clearly been communicated before. As I did put it on like it was a salad dressing so quite a lot.. However we will contact you as mentioned above their have been several issues with the main. I just got most upset about the salad as we got charged for something uneatable and not...

We haven't been to this place in a few years, as we were so disappointed then so we decided to give it another chance to see if it had improved, in actual fact it had got worse. Firstly the pint of Guinness I ordered looked more like a pint of Mild, and my wife's pint of Peroni was completely flat. We had the squid starter which we shared, £6.49.Fir mains; My steak which was meant to be a special 28 day matured, 10 ounce Rib eye, was more like an 8 ounce rump from a 28year old cow, infact I didn't realise till I got home that I cracked a tooth trying to chew it. It was meant to be served with asparagus but they had none and were supposed to give me other vegetables instead but only gave me a total of a dessertspoon of veg. My wife wanted a pasta dish but they only had one on the menu; Sea bass and Seared Scallops Risotto £15.99 but they had no Risotto, so she asked for some other pasta, her dish turned up with boiled penne, no sauce and two realy small halves of Seabass on top nothing else. I had two pints and my wife had just one we had no deserts or coffee and it all came to about £50.The table we sat at had more food in the groves than we were served on our plates.Then when we both mentioned about the steak to the bar man he completely ignored us, We had to go to the bar to make payment as we couldn't find anyone while at our table. We are locals and like to support local business and we go out a lot as we frequently work too late to cook, But we will never go back there again.I would confidently say that if they didn't have the Premier Inn next door with different people comming and going they would have no business. So...