The Standard — Restaurant in Epping Forest

The Standard provided the worse Christmas dinner I’ve ever had. From beginning to end, this place was an absolute disaster. The warning signals started from the moment we arrived. There as a distinct lack of atmosphere, awful Christmas music blaring at full volume, with waitresses dressed as if they’d just got out of bed. As we sat at the table, we found ourselves blinded by the low winter sun shining through the vast glass windows. We asked if they could put the blinds down. It turns out they don’t have blinds. We asked if we could move some chairs to the side of the table to avoid looking into the sun. The waitress told us that we’d be in their way. Tough. We would not be eating our Christmas dinner while wearing sunglasses.

As part of the package, our meal came with a free drink. The waiter, however, gave no information as to what this was or offered it to us. No drinks service turned out to be a theme of the meal. Instead, we ended up using sign-language to communicate with the barman who appeared to be the only one not living the nightmare. The attitude of the waitresses was very much ‘you are my problem’. They walked around with faces of thunder, clearly arguing with other staff and taking out their anger in the form of grumpy, awful service.

Our starter. Just wow. I have never seen something served out the made our entire table wait for the first person to ‘dare’ taste it. It was a bowl of green pea soup, with a mushroom sauce and cheese. It may sound okay, but my God, the presentation was something else. It very much looked like someone had been sick on the plate. Although it tasted okay, it put everyone off actually eating it.

When the main Christmas dinner arrived, it was drowning in gravy. Most places would give YOU the option to pour your gravy to your liking. The meat tasted bland, overcooked and just cheap. The veg was overcooked and to be blunt; the whole thing was a disaster. The majority of our party ate maybe a third before abandoning it entirely.

Later on, for the season finale, we then discovered at the bottom of our table water jug that there was a beautiful skin of black mould. When we pointed this out we got a ‘Sorry. I’ll grab another one’ — no offer of a free drink or a discount on the bill. But wait, there was to be a final plot twist. Our grumpy waitress then walks out of the staff room with her dog under her arm. She proceeds to walk around, holding the dog before sitting down of the sofas for an impromptu staff break in full view of us. She then puts the dog away and continues working — no washing of hands, nothing.

The most unfortunate part of it all is that our dear grandad, as is tradition, had offered to party for everyone’s meal — Thats around 13 of us. As a result, whereas in normal circumstances we would have either kicked up a fuss or walked out we didn’t want to embarrass him or ruin our Christmas dinner. So sadly we had to keep things calm. Our grandad even proceeded to tip them generously, being the kind man that he is. If only he were aware of the disaster that had unfolded.

We all agreed that we would never be returning. The Standard fails on every single point. Service, drinks, food quality, hygien, the lot. Seriously, don’t bother. This place won’t be...

A few months ago I booked the upstairs function room for our baby shower. I found that Michelle (the staff member that handles events bookings) was very responsive when booking the venue but much less so thereafter.

There are no formal viewings of the function room that you can arrange before the event. Instead we were told to walk-in and ask the restaurant staff to show us the space, only they are naturally very busy. So we had to view the space in a rushed fashion, and the restaurant staff were unable to answer any questions we had about event planning. We were also sent a video of the space floor plan but not all the furniture in the video is included in the space on the day. There is no capacity to plan what furniture you need - and we were told that we had to have the room how it was laid out on the day.

On the day we found the room was not well cleaned. The furniture which has a velvet upholstery was covered in stains and glitter. I asked Michelle for a vacuum to try and clean the furniture myself - but this was never provided.

And finally, I think I found the communication with Michelle quite abrupt and rude. The only way to contact her is through WhatsApp or by calling her mobile number. As I work full time - I would often message Michelle in the evenings/weekends. Naturally when messaging a business you expect them to pick up the query the next working day - so at no point was I expecting an immediate response or did I call her out-of-hours. However each time she would send me the message "please feel free to call or text me tomorrow during working hours to discuss," and seemed to expect me to resend the message. I found this bizarre because as a restaurant I was unsure what her "working hours" were as they do operate in evenings/weekends. Also, if you're providing your mobile as your only contact, then possibly just wait to respond when you're next "working." Otherwise possibly use an e-mail or an alternate work number to communicate with clients.

Overall although the event went well - I wouldn't book another event here. I found organising the event with Michelle was unnecessarily stressful and unpleasant. I will say that the serving restaurant staff on the day were lovely. We also found that the food was a big hit and...

I enquired about booking the upstairs for my birthday in early august for my birthday mid November. I was sent details about pricing and the tour straight away to which I said I was keen to book. I was also greatful at how quick Michelle got back to me, I asked if they take Amex to which I got a reply just saying ‘no’ I then asked if I could I put this booking in place as I was happy with how the venue looked (I used to party in this venue wayyy before it was the standard and back when it was ‘Luxe’ and ‘minx’ so was happy to have this as my 30th birthday venue. I asked if I could pay the venue hire fee on the Thursday ( This was the Tuesday) to which I got absolutely no reply. I then asked them to send over the bank details so I could make the transfer… no reply.. I text again asking if she had got my message about the transfer details. She replied with an abrupt message saying the date is gone because she gave it to someone else. When I questioned why, as I was asking for bank details and was keen to book in, ( She did not give me a sense of urgency or say at all about timings or other people were enquiring about this particular date) all I got was a rude and passive aggressive reply. Certainly says a lot that a lot of the reviews on here are about this woman’s people skills and being awfully rude. When I said this is not how you treat a potential customer who was waiting to pay the hire fee, (and the fact she didn’t even tell me I had to keep checking in) all I got was “ There is absolutely nothing wrong with our business” The humanly decent thing to do, is to reply to messages or at least say we cannot hold the venue for another 2 days, or I’m sorry if you don’t pay within X time I have to give this to someone else. There was nothing. Then to come back with a horrible message like that and not even an apology, her rude and abrupt manner has left me in tears all afternoon and stressed to high heavens about booking another venue.

Absolutely horrific service, I work in customer service and would never speak to a potential customer like that or be rude and just not reply to messages. Think this manager needs a CPD course on...