Royal Oak — Restaurant in London

Located in a prime spot besides the popular St George's Shopping Centre, Central Harrow and at the end of St Anne's Road and Precinct, the Royal Oak by Greene King is a fantastic place to spend five minutes or five hours. With a fresh, clean, pandemic friendly interior of moody lighting, LED TVs for live sports, BOSE sound system and sunny pub garden exterior, every preference and occasion can be accounted for. Whether a quick solo visit, with family, friends or to decompress with work colleagues: the ambience is both invigorating and mellow enough to give a family friendly, very neighbourly feel.

The staff are outstanding pros and absolute assets to the Greene King brand. Friendly, competent, flexible, approachable and personable, they are happy to check in with regulars and welcome newcomers with equally enthusiastic kindness and warmth. It makes a huge difference to the consumer journey and customer experience if the staff can deliver incredible, unobtrusive service. Especially in a friendly town such as Harrow, a suburb of a true Megapolis in London. Special mentions to Anish, Beth, Lorenzo, Leanne, Levon, Brad, Gigi, Jess, Rainer, Rita, X and Yoni: since reopening, each has served us and every member has impressed.

The drinks are everything standard one might seek to find at a public house. The food menu is diverse and reinvigorating. There are superb lunchtime deals as well as special seasonal changes and offers to make the most of while the pandemic friendly App is a must use for experiencing the usual fast reliable service when the venue is populated. Especially now during good weather, the Euros and Wimbledon imminently, too.

They also serve great non alcoholic and hot drink alternatives, should they be preferred. The fish and chips are supreme. The vegan burger sliders are probably the best starter in any mainstream pub anywhere. The soups and pizzas look fresh and are allegedly superb, just the menu is so wholesome and large that there are so many meals yet to have. The. Burgers are huge stacks, the Hunter's chicken is a throwback to solid grilled alternatives and the lasagne as with most of the food options is made by an actual Italian team.

Food 5/5 Drinks 5/5 Cleanliness 5/5 Pandemic Protocol 5/5 Customer Service 5/5 Efficient Staff? Y Flexible menú? Y Free WiFi? Y Table Service? Y

10/10 would recommend to anyone staying in, or passing...

Awful.

Edit. I would be happy to alter my review if any of my "falsehoods" were highlighted to me.

Where to start?

First the staff were almost blaming the customers because they were "so busy". Regardless of the fact at least 5-6 tables were empty. I could maybe expect some stress levels increasing after my party of 10 walked in. But we BOOKED. They knew we were coming. UNPREPARED.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt for being stressed about how "busy" it was. And promptly ordered our food. "It's a new menu". I ended up giving in to my FIFTH choice as all the other options were "unavailable". The wait was 40minutes for some of our food to arrive. 3 plates of a total of 9 arrived. No sign of the other food after +hr wait. " We were not expecting to be so busy". Despite the fact 70,000 were descending on Wembley for the Sunday football match. UNORGANIZED

With places to be and now needing to source food from somewhere else, we attempted to leave and get a refund. Staff on the restaurant floor are unable to issue a refund without the manager who was "sleeping upstairs". Manager was upset that we have had to get him out of bed. If only he trained his staff, the place may run without him and have someone on the bar floor able to issue refunds. This is again not our fault. INCOMPETENCE.

So the manager I can rate as, unprepared, unorganized and incompetent. The...

Awful experience. We went there yesterday and we were having a nice afternoon with friends, until we had an issue with the ordering app - the food they delivered was NOT what I had picked from the app, apparently because what I had ordered was unavailable (and yet I saw it in other people's plates, but well). We asked to replace it with another side but they told us we would need to pay for the difference because it was not their problem/fault and we would need to contact the Head office of the ordering app. The Manager Jessica would give us attitude and telling us we were being rude JUST because we were asking to have a good customer care since the difference in price for the side was slightly above £1, but she just walked away and refused to speak to us - she would not get out of her office. She was extremely rude herself and she lost 5 customers to just save £1 or so. Unbelievable, I've never seen something like that before. I must say the rest of the staff were kind and very willing to help and in the end they served another portion for free (hence my 1 star). The pub itself is nice and big. Shame for the management. We will obviously never go back there. There's a serious lack of customer...