Penelope's Restaurant & Farm Shop | Sidcup — Restaurant in London

In the interest of fairness I’d like to say that some people in my party had some nice food served up to them which looked fresh and also well cooked. However, my customer service experience at Penelope’s was absolutely dire and alone would prevent me from going back or even recommending it to my worst enemy.

To my great regret, I ordered their eggs Benedict. An appalling choice on my part, admittedly, as the portion was small, the bits of bacon were equally minuscule with gristly, unrendered fat, and the bun was barely toasted and pretty stale. The “hollandaise” sauce (if you could call it that) was clearly bought from a packet (fine, okay, I understand that most places are not the Waldorf so are unlikely to make their own hollandaise in house these days, but at least don’t insult my intelligence by calling it hollandaise when it comes out looking radioactive and tastes like a bland can of Campbell’s soup from 1989). So at the earliest opportunity on a busy Sunday I made a complaint, having eaten precisely one of the buns and eggs (forgive me for being hungry while I’m solo parenting a child and hadn’t eaten anything all morning). The waitress who attended to me was very kind and accommodating. I simply asked if I could have something very basic in its stead like a sausage sandwich (my infant son had the sausages which looked great). I would have equally been happy with another alternative - a bit of cake (anything, to be quite honest with you). Then another waitress came back with my plate and asked me what the problem was because I had “eaten quite a lot” (bearing in mind the small portion size would indeed make it seem like I had eaten a lot since there was not a lot there to begin with). They proceeded to tell me that they were unable to give me an alternative as they were at this point no longer serving breakfast, and would not take it off my bill, but would offer me a “complimentary hot drink” which I did not want. I was told that I could email the manager with my complaint, but she would not come and speak to me since she was “too busy”. I told the member of wait staff that I would like a resolution before leaving the restaurant and so was told I had to go to the food hatch to speak to said manager. I proceeded to make my complaint to the manager, but what followed was not at all pretty. The manager called me a liar, telling me she “didn’t believe me” and showed no contrition; neither did she make any effort to make me feel any better about my bad experience, where I had been humiliatingly forced to leave the table and leave my infant son in the care of friends. The member of wait staff for some reason got the impression that I was complaining about bad wait service because I said that there had been no one in our vicinity to complain to and I couldn’t get anyone’s attention at an earlier opportunity, and so started chiming in and ganging up on me with the manager. Really not the most pleasant experience and really awful behaviour by them. I was impatiently dismissed and told to leave and then the manager made a theatrical display of telling me she would “cover my bill” (the bill was not “covered”, for information, as we were a large party, and the drink I had and the meal my son had was paid for). No doubt the manager will come on here with her guns blazing to once again call me a liar and gaslight me. I’m simply stunned at the way I was treated and wouldn’t return if the four horsemen of the apocalypse arrived and it was the only food establishment left standing.

**Edit: for a full panorama of the total rudeness and gaslighting of these (my friends did not “apologise” for me), see the fully anticipated snarky response from the manager. Just nasty,...

Came here on Sunday morning at 11.30am with my family and, on arrival, the venue was nice and the drinks orders were made quickly and came out in good time. That's the only positive feedback I have of this place.

We ordered our food at around 11.45 - 4 English breakfasts (a couple with small changes), a MINI breakfast (for a child), an American breakfast (pancakes and bacon) and a Penelope's breakfast for myself, which I asked for with no avocado (I'm intolerant) and well-done scrambled egg. The food took OVER AN HOUR to arrive. We flagged down at least 3 members of staff, who looked confused and said they'd check but then never came back to update us. I even flagged down a manager who said we were next in line in the kitchen (we had seen so much food go to the outdoor tables by this point - who arrived after we did - but everyone inside seemed to have no food in front of them). When the first lot of food did arrive, there was avocado on my plate, which I flagged, and it was taken back.

When the English breakfasts came, one didn't have any toast at all, and the mini breakfast had more sausages and bacon than the adults ones did. Some of the food was already cold too. When my meal was brought back over, the scrambled egg was wet when I asked for well-done and there were no vine tomatoes like it said on the menu. Everyone else's meals had MEASLY portions of toast and no butter. We asked for ketchup and the server brought over one tiny pot to share between 8 people. At this point, everyone else had their food apart from one of the children and the servers didn't seem concerned that a child was without a plate. We raised this and the server seemed confused, like there wasn't a problem. He went away and, surprise surprise, didn't return. We later saw a different server walk outside with a plate, then back inside and we asked what meal it was - turns out to be our missing one. Absolutely flabbergasting how the team there have absolutely no logic or common sense, or no idea where tables are or how to work in hospitality.

No one came over to check if we were okay or if we wanted more drinks. No one apologised for the atrocious service, or offered to take items off the menu even though they were wrong and we waited a ridiculous amount of time for. This place really needs to invest in training their staff and assigning areas to look after, so they're not just walking all over the place aimlessly like they have no idea what's going on.

I've never had an experience like this before and unfortunately means I won't be returning, and would urge other people not to bother unless you're having light...

We came here recommended by friends, but was a really poor experience and won’t recommend to anyone. The waiter looking after us was really nice, friendly and efficient and did his best to make us feel welcome (tall with man bun), but the experience was a shambles. Pizzas came out within 5-10 minutes, but 10 minutes later there was no sandwich and when my mum went to enquire about it she was told to look at the kitchen and see how busy they are, which seemed a really bizarre statement to make to someone in their 60s, making an assumption that we are meant to be psychic. I tried to defend that maybe it was a busy day for the chef and high volume in sandwiches can sometimes cause back log if you don’t have the right people in the right place; however when I went through to use the bathroom, there were only five tickets on the pass and the manager and chef were just chatting to each other. 15 minutes later my mum went to check again and were advised it would be at least another ten minutes, then another 15 minutes passed and we gave up and asked for the bill. They kindly gave free olives and a 15% discount and our waiter was very friendly and efficient, but it was only at 60% capacity on a Sunday afternoon and really poorly run. I’ve ran pubs, restaurants and kitchens for many years so I can sympathise and empathise; but there is no excuse for telling customers to look at the kitchen and see how busy it is, like what are they meant to be looking at if they don’t work in hospitality? And very poor show from the chef, standing around complaining doesn’t produce food quicker :) just advise customers of wait times and let people know that pizzas and sandwiches come out at different times and then you manage expectations and at least we have a choice of if we want to wait or not, it shouldn’t be down to a customer to be psychic and gauge how long food is going to take to be served, then get made to feel unwelcome when asking how long it will take. The smoothies and milkshakes were very nice though. Pizza was good but well over priced...