The Black Lion — Restaurant in London

I shouldn't get wound up by a local bookshop advertising 'Taupe Tuesday' as a gentle urbane response to 'Black Friday' but I did. Sorry Hampstead, it's me not you, equally I shouldn't be wound up by pubs squeezing in as many tables as they can to maximise profit but I do. I came to the black lion for a meal with my girlfriends old work mates. I could linger in this review over small things like too noisy, not enough space, no beef, but they are subjective responses and many people like a packed noisy pub with no beef and see it as a sign that they have hit upon a popular spot so that may just be my thing. My real beef or issue came when I realised after eating a quite bland pearl barley and haddock risotto(£16) that the 'Caerphilly Rarebit' seemed to have been missing from my dish which may have given it a nice little salty bite that it was missing. I had a polite chat with the chef and he told me it was a subtle layer on top which me and another had both failed to detect. Fair enough I thought, and was at the point of walking away, sad but enlightened, when the manager appeared on my shoulder and asked me if everything was alright. I went through the chat again, for what it was worth and he (in a world weary or perhaps 'people' weary way) asked me if 'there was anything they could do to make the situation better?'. THIS was what bugged me, the passive aggressive stock customer service bull** response which requires no real thought or concern. I'd already dealt with the chef, I felt the manager came over because he knew he had this little gem of a response up his sleeve, why couldn't he have just warmly said, please let me get you a drink, I can see you are disappointed or something human. By asking me to tell him what to do he asks me to look like a tit by saying 'knock £2.25 off my bill for the lack of flavour' or 'could I get a half of bitter to make up for my dull meal'. Can he make the situation better? not after he said that. Can you give me back my sense of hope and excitement at the meal to come that was so crushed when I put that insipid risotto in my mouth...no. Maybe we upset them off or something. The...

Really disappointed. 5 of us had booked a table to have lunch and drinks from 1pm on Saturday to celebrate a friend's birthday. We were told the area in the garden where we were sitting was reserved for a party of 50 for 5.30pm. That's fine, we were more than happy to move inside when they arrived. The party people slowly began to arrive. We politely said we will just finish our drinks and move inside. At this point only about 10 had arrived so still plenty of space. There were two guys sitting close to us who this party asked to move( not very nicely) they joined us on our side to also finish their drinks. As we started to stand up a girl from the party waved at us and said " bye, bye. Move on" this was not said in a polite way! My friend said " there's no need to be so rude" as we went to go inside the same girl called " bye, bye. Go and get a job! Just to state we all have jobs!! We went inside and my friend went to complain to the manager ' Christian', he was immediately defensive and because my friend touched his arm whilst trying to explain what had happened he said she was being aggressive. He later said to me " if the short blonde girl apologises to me I will let you all stay." As we were talking to the manager the girl from outside came in. She was being aggressive, shouted and walked away as my friend followed her to talk to her she accidently stepped on the back of the girls sandal and it broke. Christian then accused my friend of assault because of this. Oh I forgot to mention the girl also shouted "you're just a bunch of 50 year olds". 😂 We were then refused to be served. Honestly, I have never known anything like it! I really do believe that we were not listened to because we were a party of 5 and they were going to get a lot more money from a party of 50. However, this didn't ruin our evening out as we were warmly welcomed into other bars and pubs in West Hampstead and had a...

One staff member was rude to us before we ordered but we still placed a food order of snacks and ordered drinks at the bar.

When the charcuterie platter arrived we couldn't believe how bad it looked, we had to check the price again on the menu, £16.20. This plate of average quality meats with a few old hard crackers and some token green bits would have been overpriced at half the price they charge, especially given the quantities they offer. Knowing that we were being ripped off before we even tired the food made it even worse.

They simply must vastly improve this item, price it under £8 or remove it from the menu.

I raised the issue with the barman, who instantly agreed that we were being ripped off, claiming that this platter used to be much better. There was no attempt to make up for this however.

When paying the bill we were asked to leave a review online. At this stage I mentioned that we would leave a review, but that it would not be a good one. I mentioned the sub-standard quality of the platter and that it was vastly overpriced. The response from the waitress was incredible, I couldn't believe what I heard. She told us that the area was for people of higher incomes to justify the price of their poor quality platter.

So there you have it, this place considers it fine to rip off customers on the basis of their assumed incomes. No matter what ones income, who is happy to overpay for low quality products? Who is happy to be ripped off? That is before mentioning the assumptions that were made about our party by the waitress' comment.

We were planning on bringing a larger group to this pub in two weeks time for an evening and night of food and drinks. Obviously there is no chance that we will be doing this following our experience.

We strongly suggest you avoid this pub for some time until they fix the issue with the staff and more importantly decide not to rip off...