Smith's Bar & Grill — Restaurant in London

From arrival, the manager was stand offish and staff unwelcoming. There were multiple issues regarding the attitude of the staff and service. The event itself was okay (SINTILLATE) the music and musician were good but it was let down by the venue which doesn’t reflect well. First of all, we were a party of 32 and not only 29 places were laid out. The waiters were extremely slow to rectify this issue, leaving guests standing whilst starters were being served. Next, there was one pregnant lady, one lady undergoing medical treatment and another who was sober. They had asked on three occasions for mocktail’s and were SERVED ALCOHOL on all three occasion’s. When one of the ladies asked for the waiter to confirm if the drink on the third occasion was alcohol free, his response was ‘I don’t know’. This is diabolical, to make the mistake once would be bad enough but three times is ludicrous and extremely dangerous for the circumstances of the ladies. Then, when I asked why some items were gluten free on the online menu and the same items not gluten free on the physical menu at the restaurant, I was spoken down to like a child from the waiter. He was talking to me like I was an idiot who couldn’t understand the GF symbol which I made clear I could, the issue was the caesar salad was GF on the online menu and not on the physical copy so I think it was a reasonable question to ask and not to receive a response like I was a child. Then the GF lady asked what she could eat and he replied saying ‘anything on the menu’ to which she replied she wanted the fish and chips and be said no it was not GF, he was becoming very sarcastic. I thought the service could not get any worse from this but it did. One lady on my table had been given five dishes at once, served by multiple waiters. The rule is that you were able to order two dishes as on the bottom of the menu. When I asked the waiter to order another meal (only having one small dish for a whole hour) he refused and said all ten of us had to be seated at the table before he could take orders, eight of us were sitting down whilst two were in the toilet. At this point I had had enough. I went to the manager (tall, blonde with a South African accent) and told him how can this lady get served five times in one hour and the rest of the table once. His response was ‘Madam, madam, look how many of you there are’, I said there are 32 to which he said ‘ madam there are only 3 of us’ and I replied saying that is bad management and he should have more staff when he knows he has a party of 32. He then was getting more rude and demanding ‘madam what do you want to eat then’. I felt so belittled and that he was misogynistic at this point as he was constantly belting out ‘madam’ to me with a stinking attitude when I was trying to speak. One of the ladies at the party later overheard him talking about me to one of the other waiters, loud enough so that she could hear. It was only when I paid at the end he was sarcastically being nice to me. He did make sure to tell me that the event was Sintillate and he was only the restaurant hosting it (obviously I knew this) trying to shift the blame but I said the issue was with Smith’s. I do not accept the argument that they were understaffed as we went to an event afterwards where we had exceptional service and customer care from the venue, looking after 32 of us. The service was extremely slow that we only managed to have 1 main dish from 2:30-5pm so 30mins would not have made a difference. Our drinks were also left empty for long periods of time. Dessert did not come out until 4:56pm at which point I had left and only a couple of ladies managed to get one churros each. Before I left i had paid the bill, leaving extra payments of alcohol cocktails and steak supplements left for the other to pay. I had heard from the party that they were trying to charge them for the mocktails!! We have in an email saying that mocktails could replace the alcohol with no...

Fancy aesthetics are nothing but surface level.

Came for a Sunday Roast on 29/09 with my Mum and brother before I moved across the world permanently, so it was a special occasion. I’d like to preface this review that myself and my brother have worked in hospitality from a young age, from cafés, pubs and to fine dining, so we understand that mistakes happen and that places can have off days. We are the last group to make a fuss, but I feel like it’s only right to communicate our poor experience here!

We had a booking at 2.30, arrived a little late at 2.40 (15 minute grace period), yet the table wasn’t ready and had to wait , despite the restaurant being practically empty with plenty of available tables.

We were eventually sat and waited a while before we were seen to by a waiter who did not seem happy to be there, very quiet you could barely hear him and didn’t even say ‘hello’ to greet us.

They had no more beef Sunday Roasts at 2.45, so we ordered three lamb shanks (£25 each) a Diet Coke, lemonade and lime and some tap water. The Diet Coke tasted flat, there was no lime cordial in the lemonade, and the tap water bottle was so dirty around the top! My brother also had to change cutlery as it was dirty too.

The lamb shanks arrived very quickly, oddly quickly (we soon found out why). Portion of meat was large, but vegetables extremely small, and the Yorkshire was basically flat on all three - really hard to believe they are homemade as stated on the menu from the appearance.

The vegetables and Yorkshire were lukewarm, but we persevered. I took two bites of the lamb shank and realised it was cold, I thought I might be overthinking it, until my Mum touched the meat - it was STONE cold!!! Almost like it had been taken out of the fridge. We alerted somebody immediately, who took it seeming like he didn’t believe me. I told him to touch it himself and he said he would get me a new one. Honestly, my appetite had gone but I didn’t want to seem rude.

The second dish came after my Mum and brother had finished eating theirs. It was steaming hot, but found everything but the roast potatoes to be quite bland, asked for some salt and pepper, and the pots didn’t work (seems like a minor issue, but it all adds up!).

One thing that I did notice, was no check-backs were done. None before I had tasted the first lamb shank, none for whilst my Mum and brother were eating, and none to check back after they had given the second lamb shank. Doing check-backs could easily resolve guest problems, and shows you care about their experience with you!

Plates were cleared, we asked for the bill, and not only was there not an offer for one of the lamb shanks to be removed off of the bill, or a discount, but a service fee was charged. Read the room! Considering how bad the experience had been, a little bit of guest goodwill would have gone a long way, and probably saved a bad review!

When we asked the waiter to remove the service, he said ‘What happened?’ - which we thought was pretty bizarre considering what had happened. Maybe if he had done a check-back he would have known.

Felt like a real waste of money, and waste of a couple of hours. There are much better roasts and dining experiences in the Little Venice area, without people dressed in fancy suits waltzing around in expensive interiors. The Bridge House would have been a much better choice in hindsight as the Team are fantastic there and their roasts are incredible. But thought we’d try somewhere new as I was local.

As somebody in the hospitality industry, some of the things I have mentioned might seem small, and in isolation they wouldn’t have mattered too much, but combined together really make a difference. It also didn’t seem like the venue was just having a bad day, but more issues with just day to day operation. Hope you guys can take this...

We had the bottomless roast last Sunday as part of their 50% off launch offer. The food was of appalling quality, I would not pay the discounted price of £22.50, let alone its actual cost. The atmosphere and food reflected a chain buffet restaurant which you would visit for quantity, not quality except it took so long for the food to come out, you're better off going somewhere else if that is your purpose.

As others mentioned, service was also excruciatingly slow. The restaurant was extremely busy due to the offer but the restaurant should have been more prepared and organised given its usual price point. I could see the waiters trying their best to keep customers happy as they were all very friendly and welcoming but they were clearly understaffed (e.g. we never received our table water and had to go to the bar to collect a bottle of water and refill it ourselves each time; we were told by one waiter we had to order our food in a specific order then witnessed tables around us ordering food willy nilly; lamb shoulder was no longer available).

We arrived at 8:15PM. Nobody came to take our order until the third time we flagged down a waiter. The starters came out relatively quickly but none of it required cooking. They were cold meats, mushy and warm smoked salmon and stale ricotta parcels.

We then proceeded to wait 1hr and 10 mins for our mains whilst I watched a table of 5 next to us receive their second round of mains earlier than us because they had been allowed to order multiple rounds of mains at the same time.

I would have been fine to wait if the food wasn't so abysmal. We first ordered the chateaubriand (where we also had a miscommunication re the additional charge for this) and it looked as if it had been sitting out for a while then reheated. My meat was tough to chew, leathery and GREY. I couldn't even ask for a replacement at this point as it was almost 10PM, the restaurant closed at 11PM and I couldn't fathom waiting another hour for it. We subsequently ordered the picanha which managed to arrive quicker than the chateaubriand and tasted marginally better despite being priced at half the price point of the chateaubriand on the a la carte menu.

The chicken was also extremely dry and lacked any flavour whatsoever except for its skin which had a strong lemon and salt taste which I wouldn't say was completely pleasant.

I received churros which were undercooked and raw in the middle. They began running out of the day's ice cream flavours and served me what they had leftover, strangely in a pile of desiccated coconut which should not have been added as it was unpleasant to have grainy bits in the sorbet.

Honestly, I was just extremely shocked by the appalling quality of the food. Given the usual prices charged, I was expecting much better quality and preparedness for such an event. I wish I had never gone, it was such a complete waste of...