The Boaters Inn — Restaurant in London

10/10 Location, Service, Food quality, Presentation 9/10 Decor 7/10 Parking 7/10 Prices (acceptable considering location though)

Thoroughly excellent Sunday lunch. I would recommend booking first because its very popular. I had fish pie, devilled whitebait starter. My wife had the vegan burger and my son had the Thai soup. Everyone was very satisfied.

This venue is at its best in the Spring/Summer time with the outside area open. The view of the Thames is incredible. Its a place to bring family or friends for lunch/dinner or just to have a lazy prosecco afternoon with your mates.

There isn't any parking but there are spaces among various nearby roads. I would recommend getting an uber or bus here anyway.

Highly recommended.

24th July 2022 addendum :

Unfortunately since my original glowing review I have had to add some extra detail about an experience my wife had yesterday.

Every time in the past when we have ordered the soup for my 5 year old we have received bread and butter with it. Yesterday they didn't receive any bread with the soup, so they asked the waiter to bring it. At the end they realised they were charged £5 for the two slices of bread. They enquired about this and were told that bread and butter is an extra to be paid for.

This has left my wife's experience a bit marred now. She felt it lessened the experience and the place and felt a bit, well, cheap.

I would have thought bread and butter should automatically come with soup in a super nice venue such as Boaters. If necessary have it included as part of the price.

£5 isn't much money to a lot of people who live in the Kingston and Richmond area (to some it is though). To us it wasn't the price - it was the experience.

If I was the manager, I would have given the 2 slices of bread and butter complimentarily and mentioned that normally its charged for (even though numerous times in the past it wasn't), hence my wife's not unreasonable assumption that it was included in the menu price. That would have left the customer with a fab experience and huge goodwill.

As it is now, I have to take 1 star off what was originally a 5 star recommendation. I still highly recommend visiting boaters - you certainly won't regret it.

Just remember that if you want 2 slices of bread with your soup that you'll...

I've been to the Boaters Inn on a few occasions in the last few months. What keeps us coming back is that it's dog friendly, you're by the river, it's got a good atmosphere and the other customers are always friendly. However, the food is very average and the customer service, while mostly pleasant, isn't great. It often feels like staff are trying to avoid eye contact when you are trying to get their attention.

On our recent visit we were recommended a meal by a staff member, which my wife tried and had to send back because she didn't like the crab burger, which was the main part recommended and the main part of the meal. We were still charged for the meal, which didn't feel great, as we hadn't eaten it. However, we appreciate their policy is if it's sent back due to personal preference they charge you but they'll give you the replacement meal free (my wife had soup as a replacement).

What wasn't great is that they didn't tell us this beforehand. The soup was significantly less in cost. If we had known their policy we could have chosen a more comparably priced meal. They also took the whole meal away, including fries, which I would have really enjoyed eating, but wasn't given the option and wasn't told we would be charged for them regardless. If we had known that we would have kept the fries we were being charged for.

The staff member was quite defensive when approached above it and didn't seem to understand that we should have been given the option to keep any part of the meal we did like, seeing as they were going to charge us for it anyway. And that it would have been good to have been told their policy prior to choosing a replacement meal. All in all, it wasn't a great experience.

Later that day we stopped by Bills restaurant in Kingston which is a short 11 min walk away and the customer service and attentiveness of staff there was so, so much better. And we’ll be eating their much more often than we do at Boaters Inn, in the future.

If the customers service and food was better at Boaters Inn, I wouldn't hesitate to give it a 5 star rating as the location, customers, and dog friendly atmosphere is great. It's a shame about the rest. I'll have to think twice about bringing friends and family here again...

First of all it was very busy as it was Christmas day, and the meal was advertised as £88 per head. The venue was decked out beautifully and looked really festive. We ordered drinks, drinks were wrong and had to clarify and send one back, starters were gorgeous we had the chowder and artichoke soufflé which were lovely. I had the turkey and my husband had the beef wellington, I have to say the mains were a real let down, massively undercooked roast carrot, far too sweet red cabbage, dry turkey and we ordered sides of Brussels (which were threatened with some hot water but enough to reduce bullet like texture), pigs in blankets and stuffing, the stuffing was blond and cold due to undercooking and the pigs in blankets were also undercooked and cold mainly due to lack of blankets, the bacon had come off before it reached our table. The desserts arrived, my husband had chocolate tart and I had the cheese plate, the decision had been made to drizzle some disgustingly sweet and smokey clear stickiness over the cheese and crackers so everything was contaminated with it, and barely enough crackers to eat half the cheese! The meal was very much a disappointment, however it was Christmas day and it was very busy and I was grateful to have not cooked, we didnt say anything about the food as we didnt want to be ungrateful on Christmas day! However the bill arrived... we had paid half of the £88 each for a reservation fee and the bill came to £253 on top of the £88 we had already paid, we had two cokes, two glasses of brut at £11 and a mulled wine, nothing excessive so we were quite shocked that this would have cost £330 for two! On further examination of the bill, two "fudge dishes" had been "mistakenly added to the bill adding £60 and £7 of the 12.5% gratuity. On mentioning this to the waitress she just said "we at least you checked it" i have to say we were glad to leave. The food was not worth the cost, neither was the service. I get it was christmas day and the starters were lovely but the mains, sides were extremely disappointing and the dessert was not at all to my taste. But thank you for providing a lovely atmosphere on...