MEATliquor Bar & Restaurant Shoreditch — Restaurant in London

I am giving a 1 star review because after our visit which wasn't great, management replied to my partners review to accuse her of slander. So their customer service when receiving negative feedback is clearly on par with their cold food.

Most restaurants would take the feedback my partner left and use it to improve rather than become defensive and accusatory. We've no reason to slander, we were just normal paying customers, not from a rival restaurant. We just wanted to leave a review for other potential paying customers. You'll see in my history of reviews some great feedback for other places when it's deserved. I can assure you I don't own them all unfortunately. Otherwise I wouldn't need to dine at meatliquor.

I see in other negative reviews similar issues that people have had so it's not like we're the outlier here. I do wonder how they received a "we welcome your feedback" type reply compared with our "oh you're slandering our restaurant" type reply. Helpfully for anyone reading I've collated screenshots of such reviews in the photos part of my review so that you don't have to go searching.

It is not slander to claim food was cold just because we didn't bring it up in the restaurant. What good would it have done to bring it up in the restaurant? Were you going to get it all nicely warmed up in the microwave? Or completely redo everything?

You must know as it's being made how long certain things are left waiting while others are being cooked. Chips were soggy, melted cheese was cooled and hardened back up, burger buns were soggy. The chicken? Only god knows what happened to those poor things. By how hard and reduced they were I'm guessing they were the items left cooking long enough for everything else to get cold. Maybe the quirky way of serving things felt like a good idea but it obviously contributed to the problem and I know us as a family would prefer warm food.

We're not obliged to bring everything up face to face, that's why their is a Google reviews. We paid for the food and the service charge as we realise you were all working hard and the waitresses all really nice, but that doesn't magically make the food great, but at the same time it was still obviously at least edible...

The only good part of our experience here was a nice warm welcome by two of the junior waiters.

Service from the senior waiter was terrible. After waiting patiently to be served we tried to signal him several times, it was like we were invisible. Not sure if we'd have been served at all if it wasn't for the younger guy behind the bar to notice us and say something to him.

A few minutes after we ordered the food we decided to get some beers. We went straight to the bar only to be ignored twice by another one of the senior staff members. Ironically we ended up ordering from the waiter again.

The food came promptly. It was fairly tasty but this was due to the various dressings and sauces, the actual meat and chips were dry and bland.

About halfway through our meal and still no sign of the beers the waiter walked past with a pitcher, my girlfriend said something expecting they were for us to which the waiter said, "That was mostly weird." as he walked off.

The next time he walked past I said that we've pretty much finished our food so would like to cancel the beer. Even though we'd spoken to him twice about the beer and the place was only half full he said he thought we were sat on another table.

We joked about leaving without paying, maybe then we'd get some service. We had to call the guy over again. I said that we wouldn't be paying the optional service charge. He asked if there was anything wrong in particular. I explained that he didn't provide any service and asked if that was a fair assessment. He replied that he doesn't really care. We paid for the food and left, never to return.

Overall, another overhyped MEAT venue - more style over substance, average food, and terrible...

Update: Positive response from the team, as I said the staff have always been good. Glad they are looking to make changes. I do stand by the review, but will happily reassess on a new menu. I do want to clarify I do not doubt the quality or freshness of the food. Not a huge fan of the idea of needing manual intervention if you want to remove service charge on the app. It's another barrier that we are all generally too polite to be honest about, but that's a whole separate conversation.

So I've been here a lot and it's always pretty good and the staff are friendly. It's definitely better than some of the other American diners nearby. But it's getting pretty expensive now and my order today just seemed nuts, it was always a bit expensive, but it's just gone too far.

I'm sure, if my memory serves me right, the Monkey Fingers (Chicken strips, battered and coated in a buffalo sauce) were about £8. Today I paid £11.69, 50% more for the same thing. Now they don't have a menu and you order and pay via a QR code, the compulsory service charge is just taking the mic. There was also an Admin fee, which I saw on my email receipt, this definitely wasn't clear enough, before payment.

As for the food, my main recommendation is avoid the Beef burgers and Hotdogs, they are ok, but just not as good as the rest of the menu. Sadly, the burgers are always a bit dry and underwhelming. It makes me miss Burger Bear, that used to be in Old st station. Do definitely try the Green Chilly Chips... As in chips + chilly con carne + fresh green chillies... For ages I didn't realise it meant chilly con carne so I never...