St John's Tavern — Restaurant in London

Nice pub with a good atmosphere, service started okay i guess. came there to get a bite to eat and they were doing their own eat out to help out scheme, spend £20 get £10 off, was planning on eating regardless. Food was okay, a little bit on the expensive side £11 for a burger which was fairly small size for the price, plus £4 for a bowl of fries. presentation was not very nice as the burger was served on a board, looked kinda lonely by its self. they should just up the price and combined the burger and fries in the same plate/board and price. was planning on having another drink but since my food arrived no one came to my table to see if my food was okay, if i wanted another drink or anything else. finished my food, my glass was almost empty no one still came and asked me if i wanted anything else. waited about 15mins with a empty glass i think or could of been longer. did not want to flag down the staff as i know it can be irritating. had to go to the bar where i asked someone walking pass for the bill, bill came a couple of mins later with service charge added on, i did not think any of the above justifies adding the service charge on. asked one of the staff to remove the service charge and i could see he was a bit surprised. he removed it and i got up and left. as i was leaving he said something on the lines as 'thank you soo much' in a passive aggressive manner, fair enough its not nice when someone ask you to remove the service charge but at the same time i did not receive any service. i was here about 2 months ago or so and there was no service charge or maybe it was because i didnt have food, i left £4 tip on card when my bill was for only 3 beers because people came and actually gave me table service, maybe it was just today something was off...

seems like a nice place just today wasn't such...

Oh dear, the place has tumbled a long way from what it used to be. We turned up at 8.30 on a Thursday evening, having booked a table for supper. When making the booking, I was asked “any special requests?” under which I wrote “It’s my birthday!” (which was true). When we arrived, there were plenty of empty tables but they were all littered with the detritus of precious diners. The sweet and blameless waitress apologised that our table wasn’t ready and asked us to wait. We did. During that time we noted the general decline of the decor and atmosphere since our last welcome, which was admittedly years ago, but which we all remember as being warm, classy and faintly French. We got some drinks and eventually were ushered to a now-clean table. We were allowed to peruse the menu for a bit before the same server eventually came over to take our order, but only now announcing the devastating news that they had in fact run out of several dishes on the menu, including the one thing we had all decided we wanted: a burger. At only 8.50pm? They were out of three of the seven mains? Crushed, we examined the menu a bit more and considered our options. There weren’t many. Our server went away and came back to announce that in fact, there were now NO mains at all on offer. Huh? Could we have just starters? Maybe, yes, she said. So we discussed ordering a range of starters to share. She went away once more to the kitchen, only to come back a third time to announce that, stunningly, the kitchen was in fact going to close, as of now. No food. Our jaws just dropped, and not only to pour some consoling beer down our throats.

I mean, just wow. Such a great...

My family and I, along with friends, have been a regular to this pub for many years and have been a hardcore supporter when others have not been so happy with the service. Well imagine my disappointment when today I finally realised this venue, with its massive change in staff, has gone so down hill it’s rolled off the bottom. We booked Sunday lunch for 1pm with the knowledge that we needed to be gone by 3,30pm (their request, not ours). When we arrived we were not seen to immediately and the venue was fairly empty. However once we were seated we waited some time to have even table water (which we got ourselves) and once our order was taken it was over an hour that we waited for our food. Seeing other tables that arrived later than us being served before us was the last straw! Not once were we offered a drink or an apology... I did then take the time to complain but was told that I was right, still with no offer of any thing additional. Just one small free drink or dessert would have made it better, but the staff are not caring enough to bother, only blaming the kitchen fir the mishap! The food finally arrived, and all I can say is average at best... if you’re not going for a Sunday lunch, then don’t bother with anything else as the kitchen must only know how to cook roasts. We finally paid full bill and service (not deserved) with not one apology! Sorry St. John’s you have taken this one stage too far...as a family until things reportedly change, we won’t be returning. From a very disappointed long...