Salt Quay Rotherhithe — Restaurant in London

Very poor experience.

Visited during a stay in London on a Sunday evening around 4PM.

Sat on the upstairs outdoor balcony. My friend placed an order for food only using the Green King app. I headed to the bar to purchase a drink for both of us and food for myself. The upstairs bar did not have the Old Mout cider on tap, so I was advised to go downstairs.

Headed downstairs to the main bar, waited around 5 minutes to be served. Male bar worker incredibly rude from the start with poor communication skills. Ordered my 2x pints and my Cheese & Bacon Burger. Barman assumed I was paying card and pointed to the card machine. Saw the cash in my hand, looked me up and down rolled his eyes and said “oh cash”. Perhaps if this is the response your staff have to cash, you should consider going cashless. I don’t write this as a “cash is king, use it or loose it” type of person. I work for a long term adopter of cashless retail transactions. However, this response was unnecessary and rude. To make matters worse for myself, I showed the barman my Bluelight Card from the app, and he said he would need me to activate a code to use my service discount. I showed him the Greene King official QR code from Bluelight, he took my phone completely out my hand and entered it into his till. For whatever reason, it clearly didn’t work and he had to enter it a total of 3 times.

New total for 2x old mout ciders and a Cheese & Bacon Burger £24.xx

Returned back to join my friend on the upstairs seating balcony, to hear that he too had a poor experience with another staff member. During my time downstairs, he was approached by a male waiter who told him clearly if he was only drinking alcohol he wasn’t welcome on the upper terrace as this was for food only… baring in mind at this point he is sat alone minding his business with no food or drink. This was simply an incorrect assumption and incredibly rude considering he just ordered food on the app! To make this even more ironic, the only other people who entered this part of the venue during our short visit were those only drinking alcohol or smoking. One of the smokers being one of their own waitresses. Lovely to see whilst trying to enjoy dinner and look out on the nice view of the river.

Food arrives 10 minutes later, absolutely tasteless clearly microwaved onion rings were shrunk. Ate the food and left. We had 2+ hrs to wait for our train but would sooner sit in the station than spend anymore money with this venue.

No toilets upstairs and downstairs male toilets stank of urine

Shocking venue and...

With Christmas soon approaching, we decided to go on a nice winter walk along the river. We came across the Salt Quay by accident and decided to give it a try with no prior knowledge. We entered an empty room with an odd smell and were directed upstairs. There were no lights on the stairs, so we walked up in the dark and hoped for the best. The lights to the Christmas tree appeared non-existent. Upon reaching the second floor to this ‘restaurant’, a person behind the dark bar shouted ‘You got a reservation’ to which we answered no. We were then advised to take two menus (help ourselves) and find a table that hadn’t been reserved - it turned out that there weren’t any reservations! We sit down and bravely order some food at an establishment that didn’t get our hopes too high. We ordered a steak pie (that was listed as an ‘award-winning pie’) and a nut roast, along with some tap water and two fizzy drinks. The fizz was fine, but the water was shocking. The glasses smelt of dried urine and the water tasted like it had been reused from the Thames. What was to come next wasn’t great either. To put it bluntly, I have never seen mash look so ugly in presentation and bland in taste. It was dry, lumpy, sticky, yellow. One thing is for certain, it was not fresh or award winning. The pie was so dry. Unfortunately the same applied for the dry mushy peas. The nut roast was ever so slightly better than the pie, but again, the roast potatoes looked almost anaemic (an extra few minutes in the oven or most probably microwave would’ve helped!). The more the meal progressed, the funnier it became. One member of staff decided to accuse a colleague of acting like he’s on ‘crack’ whilst on his shift (right in front of our table). This same person I caught dozing off and vaping in one of the booths where customers could’ve chosen to sit. I was shocked, but couldn’t help but laugh at the outrageous behaviour - who was even running this establishment? Overall, a place I will never return to again. From start to finish, a shambles that brought us a barrel of laughter for the wrong reasons. Thanks for the memories and all the best...

Good views, spacious and lots of seating. We were grateful that we could be seated earlier than our initial booking… but the food was absolutely diabolical. I have been to the salt quay several times before and have always had a positive experience but regretfully it is unlikely I will return.

We ordered a roast and it arrived approx 1 minute after ordering. It was clearly reheated, though given it came out within 1 minute of ordering on the app it is unlikely to of even been reheated fully - which was confirmed with the food being cold. Lumpy gravy, a dry piece of chicken slapped on the plate, the tiniest bit of stuffing and cauliflower cheese. Cold soggy vegetables, all tasteless I couldn’t even finish it. I would have mentioned something to the staff, if you could grab their attention. We weren’t asked how our food was and when the plates were taken, was again not asked how it was - in which I would’ve given an honest review.

Next up was dessert, I was a little hesitant but I thought surely it can’t be any worse than the roast - I had sticky toffee pudding that was actually quite nice, but the custard was cold. My mother (for her birthday treat) had a lemon tart - firstly, I’m not sure a lemon tart should be illuminous green, and I’m sure it’s not meant to have the consistency of play dough, or wallpaper paste. It tasted extremely artificial and again, could not be finished. The table was also dirty and the menu had old food over it.

Overall, this was a real let down and I do feel sorry for the tourists who would come to this pub to try a classic British roast dinner. Nonetheless, it is a good spot for day drinking and socialising - but avoid the Sunday roast dinners (and lemon tarts) - it’s not worth the money or calories and I wished I could’ve got...