Marquis Of Westminster — Restaurant in London

Fun pub overall but would not recommend booking for holiday/special event.

This review was for our Christmas Day dinner which we sent to the staff afterwards. We have never received any reply from management to our email:

There were only three people working the entire restaurant, and of course those three staff members seemed extremely rushed and stressed the entire time (understandably!). This resulted in extended periods of being unattended, necessitating us to actively seek assistance for even the most basic requests. I could understand being shortstaffed on a normal pub night, but on Christmas dinner, this was extremely disappointing, considering the higher price of the fixed dinner menu assumes a higher quality of service and attention. We would have expected the pub to have prepared accordingly as they knew how many bookings they had that night. The £80 set menu price included prosecco, however, we had to request it ourselves, in fact several times as they forgot to bring it again. We were told that we'd receive a 5-course dinner, however we only received 3 courses. Our sorbet "palate cleanser" was never brought, nor were our minced pies - and again, we had to request the tea/coffee ourselves. In my opinion, not receiving the sorbet after our first course as promised is something that should have been addressed during the service. We were only told about the omission of the sorbet at the end of the meal, when the waiter discounted my partner's beer because "they didn't bring the sorbet". The casual tone used to explain this discrepancy understated the fact that the service in reality skipped over one of the promised dishes that we were paying for. The minced pies were never provided or addressed. Of course, these are two relatively small "courses" but speaks more to the service that it was not acknowledged whatsoever or considered important to inform the customers of deviations from what customers expect to have paid for. We do not believe that a total of 4 promised courses that were not provided is proportional to the discounted £5.95 beer we received. One of our desserts was also forgotten and had to be requested. Our booking states that we had our table from 3-5:30 pm. However, when we asked for our teas/coffees at 5 pm, the head waiter responded that "the pub actually shuts at 5 pm and I'm the only one in the building working so bear with me". Again, the high price we each paid means that at bare minimum, we should receive what was promised. However, the fact that we were not very well taken care of during the meal and then told to be patient while receiving items that we had previously paid for was extremely frustrating. After receiving our teas/coffees, we watched as the waiters frantically cleaned up the Christmas decorations from the other tables and began to close down the pub as we sat there. We understand that staff also have families and friends to spend time with during Christmas dinner, but we found the rushed manner sincerely unprofessional considering we had not overstayed our...

There is an incredibly rude and unhelpful bartender (thin and wears black glasses) working here.

While we were having a drink, my friend’s phone was stolen by a man who had come into the pub to “sell magazines”. He had been harassing us and other guests. The pub just allowed this man to hang around and disturb everyone. We realised a minute after he left the pub that the phone was gone (which was in a purse underneath a coat!), but people outside the pub said he had ran off and of course we couldn’t find him.

The really frustrating bit was the male bartender: Offered no sympathy, refused to assist to contact the police but said we can come back with them to get CCTV tapes However, then refused to tell us his name and also said he will definitely not be around tomorrow when we asked (so we can’t ask for him if we do come back after contacting the police) Said that this is their policy and he is “not required” to tell us his name - of course that is true but the whole attitude he took while we were asking for help was so unnecessarily legalistic and even seemed so malicious at some points. We were not being accusatory, we simply wanted help and to get information for insurance, but perhaps he was very aware that this happened in their establishment, and they didn’t promptly get the man to leave when he started harassing guests. Minor point to just stick it in our faces - We were outside for a short while to try to chase down the man (unsuccessfully) and when we came back, they’d cleared our unfinished drinks. When my friend was on another friend’s phone to cancel cards, etc and was coming back into the pub, he told my friend to stop standing in the door and making the other guests uncomfortable from the cold. Sorry but it wasn’t the first thing on my friend’s mind and I feel like there was a kinder way to say this… Where was this attentiveness to the guests when the thief was here harassing everyone!? There was a nice young woman behind the counter who had tried to ask the thief to leave (though after he was already harassing us for a while), and also piped up to tell us she would be here the next day, after hearing her colleague declining to be around tomorrow. Such a contrast to the male bartender who refused to take any charge - who didn’t do anything about the man and the first thing he wanted to make clear to us was that he was divesting any responsibility, and they had “procedures” - though obviously no policies or procedures for dealing with shady men harassing guests in your pub. If one was paranoid, his attitude seemed suspicious in hindsight…

Edit: shame, the pub otherwise looked nice and we were having a good time...

In town for only a few days, and having missed it on our last trip to London, we were so looking forward to our first "official" Sunday roast and picked this place for the good reviews and interesting menu. We could not have been more disappointed. While everyone was friendly, service was extremely slow (and they were not that busy). We wanted one beef roast and one lamb. At first we were told they were out of beef, but somehow one more appeared and we were lucky to get the last one. Then we were told there were no more Yorkshire puddings and it would be 20 minutes to make more. Well, we didn't get our meals for over 20 minutes, so I'm not sure what that was about. When the meals came, again, we were "lucky" and somehow got one dish with a Yorkshire pudding. Though I'm quite sure it was an insult to all Yorkshire puddings. It was so rock hard, it couldn't even soak up gravy, which I understand is one of its goals in life. As for the dish missing the pudding, we were told there was nothing that could be substituted (and, of course, no price adjusted), just too bad for us our meal was missing a component. Both our meals were lukewarm at best. Also, the menu describes additional interesting side dishes that were to accompany (like cauliflower cheese croquettes and buttered almond kale), yet these were nowhere to be found (!!??) These were what made the place stand out and it felt like a trick. Also, not long into the evening, maybe 8:00 or so, they were out of not only the beef roast, but also the lamb and fish and chips, and possibly other things as well. And they usually did not tell patrons until they were seated for a while and had made selections they were then told were out. What terrible customer service! We watched at least a dozen people leave anyhow. And, we felt the staff to be largely unapologetic for most of the issues. Save yourself the trouble - there are so many places serving Sunday roast, I'm sure you can only do better elsewhere. We were so sorry to have blown it by picking...