Birds — Restaurant in London

Huge potential to be a great pub but unfortunately way off the mark. As a local, i’d like to think that one day i’ll visit and have a pleasant experience but both times I have been, it’s been very disappointing, with the food/chef letting it down the most. Went for a roast there a while ago, ordered 2 chicken roasts. 20 minutes after we had ordered we were told there was only one chicken left. The young staff convinced us that their vegan roast option was to die for so my partner made the sacrifice. A further 30 minutes and we were finally delivered our roasts - both dry, tasteless and luke warm. The vegan option was a mystery to us, could of been a piece of rubber for all we know. No refund offered or compensation. The second visit was mid week during lunchtime - my mother fancied something vegan so i thought i’d take her for another try. We stood at the bar for 15 minutes waiting to be served but no one was there. Staff seemingly off-duty. You could of jumped over the bar and served yourself and no one would care! We spotted a member of staff eventually in the backroom and asked him if we could get served and he replied with “yea gimme a sec, let me just finish this off and i’ll be right with you”. Another 10 minutes later and he finally takes our order. Turns out another member of staff was present the whole time on a table close to the bar, but I guess she must of been on her lunch break and was unable to help or even explain to us what was going on... The food came, and again it was a big let down. My chicken burger was burnt to a crisp, greasy and had a lot of skin(?), my mothers vegan burger was again dry, and we were given a huge plate of wet chips covered in slop and hot sauce (we just ordered normal chips!)

A shame i’m even having to write this but big things need to change to make this a great little pub, another to add to Leytonstone's roster of great pubs - I’d love to see it reach its full potential, the beers, the retro games and vibe is great but the important stuff like the food, staff and the service is really letting it...

Ordered vegan food, got meat. Would suggest avoiding.

A month ago we ordered a late takeaway, and since we're both vegans, we ordered vegan imitation meat burgers from The Birds. After eating some of the burger, we realised they were in fact actual meat, and the labelling on the takeaway box confirmed it was real chicken. The rest of the order was correct. We phoned up, and the head chef confirmed from our description we had been delivered real meat. He apologised and refunded us for the order, which we appreciated. I have avoided meat my whole life for ethical reasons, so this was an unpleasant experience to say the least.

However, I understand that mistakes are human. We were keen to communicate the situation to The Birds, so that they could investigate how it happened, and prevent it happening again. Therefore I emailed them the same evening, to request that they look into how and why this happened, that they put in place measures to prevent it happening again, and that they feed this information back to me. Having received no response, I followed up a week later with a message on Facebook Messenger, and still received no reply. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that The Birds does not care enough to take the time to send a response. I also have no idea if they have investigated what happened, or done anything to stop it happening again. It seems clear they do not appreciate the seriousness of their error, which is quite worrying for any establishment that serves food.

I would therefore strongly suggest that anyone who cares what goes into their food - vegans, vegetarians, those following halal or kosher diets, and anyone with food intolerances or allergies - steers clear...

Money grabbing with zero customer service. We had 3 below average roasts, some good beer and I like the way the place looks but sadly the staff were so poor and we used to love this place, so it hurt more that it is crumbling under poor management. The problem arrived when it came to paying, which was the tills fault apparently. We had roasts with desert, the menu stated 2 courses for £19. Firstly we arrived to pay the bill and were told we could see the bill after we had paid, ergh... what?! We asked for the bill again, via the manager, it arrived and nothing had a price next to it just three manual transactions and a list of food. We added up the price and suggested they hadn't applied the discount, could just be a mistake, we asked for the revised bill, again the manager was asked to adjust. Returning, the staff member stated that it happened as we hadn't stated at the beginning of the meal that we wanted the discount. I nodded on the full assumption that they had applied the discount and I said "it's ok", as they entered a figure into the card reader, my thought being they didn't need to make a fuss about giving us the wrong price and moved forward with payment. As we split the bill when it came to my turn to pay I hadn't realised that in fact they didn't apply the discount, they just nodded continued with the original price... my custom and my friends custom clearly was worth less than the extra 10er they squeezed out of us....