LOCKES | Cocktail & Pizza Bar | Covent Garden — Restaurant in London

I booked this place for a small Christmas get together and did reach out to the manager directly but he has chosen to ignore my feedback and enquiry.

Firstly, I found this place on a booking website called Tagvenue where they advertise the room downstairs, it seemed like a great private event space and I was quoted a reasonable minimum spend. Upon learning of our numbers we were told the upstairs bar is available but the person I spoke to tried to get me on the same minimum spend. Luckily I ended up booking through the website and the minimum spend was much less because it was a smaller area.

I preordered food and drinks which were decent but little things niggled at the night

When the food arrived they gave us about 6 sets of cutlery. We had ordered burratta, hardly something you can pick up with your hands, so had to request more cutlery.

The space we had was at the end of the bar and I was sold it as being a great space that doesn’t have any through traffic, but the staff are constantly going back and forth through it and they were walking at such speed it’s like they pretended they didn’t see you and expected you to move around them, I found some of them to be really rude and for some reason they picked up the Christmas party props that I had brought with me and were wearing them themselves

The last blow though, was at the end of the night when I requested to pay the final bill. I had ordered 2 bottles of Prosecco, and a colleague had ordered another bottle, however the bill showed 5 bottles of Prosecco has been consumed. I wasn’t intoxicated and it was a relatively sensible night, considering how many people were drinking, there’s no way this was the case. The only thing I can think is that they double charged us for 2 bottles of Prosecco.

I emailed them the next day but no response.

So not only did they try and impose a higher minimum spend on me they also overcharged me for alcohol.

I hope it was...

This weekend, 19 August 2023, I held a surprise party for my mum's 70th birthday at Lockes Bar near Covent Garden.

What can I say? These guys are amazing! I'd booked out the area downstairs which was perfect for us. I had a few less people than originally planned but even with about 40 people it didn't feel cramped, the bar staff were very attentive and we rarely needed to wait to be served. We were also able to decorate with balloons and banners which helped to make the party feel more personal. The bar is local to both Covent Garden and Holborn underground stations (about a 4 min walk each) and while it felt very central, it was not overcrowded.

The space felt private and we were only joined in passing by 'outsiders' who needed to use the facilities as these are downstairs.

I had pre-ordered food which went down very well, I don't think there was a crumb left on the grazing boards which came out first! The pizzas were lovely, we ordered their margarita, spicy salami, ham and mushroom, the vegetarian one, 'Nduja and goats cheese and all were fabulous. The garlic bread went down a treat as well :) We had some left over and the team were more than happy to box these up for us for some of our guests to take home, a much welcome treat the following day!

We paid a deposit which was half of the minimum spend and this was returned promptly the following day having hit that minimum spend.

A massive shout out to the bar staff who were with us downstairs on the night (sorry, I can't remember names!), you were amazing.

Overall, Marco, Steve and the team are fantastic and I'll recommend this place to anyone who asks for a venue for a...

Cocktails were good, but we had an awful experience with our waiter. My friend asked for a recommendation for a sweet drink. Her drink was bitter. Since this is not what she was looking for, she nicely asked the waiter if he could swap the drink for another drink. He said that was not possible (unheard of in bars, if you dislike your drink and the glass is still full, I never saw a waiter/barman say no. Especially if it was recommended to you). After a bit of back and forth, he accepted to order a new drink and to have a chat with his manager to see if they would charge us the new drink or if they could simply swap them. He then "ordered" the new drink on his tablet. About 15-20min goes on and we all finish our drinks without the waiter coming back with a new drink. The manager spots my friend and sees that she seems unhappy so he comes to the table. We learned that the waiter never went to the manager and never ordered the new drink. The manager comes back a few minutes later with the drink. At the end, when my other friend raised her hand to grab the waiter's attention, smiled at him and asked for the bill, he rolled his eyes at her! He then comes to the table, and pushes the bill towards us, turns to my friend who disliked his recommendation and says "Are you happy now ?" with a rude tone. Completely unprofessional! We should have asked the service charge to be removed, but at this point we just wanted to get out as quickly as possible. The drinks were good, the ambiance was nice, but the owner should have a talk with their staff. That kind of behaviour is unacceptable. We will...