The Bootlegger Vault — Restaurant in London

In a nut shell... Service is extremely slow The food does not come as described on the menu The food quality is extremely poor and does not match the Google reviews I feel sorry for the bar staff/waitresses at this place because they have to take the brunt of the SLT being cheap and offering little to no quality.

The whole review is as followed:1

We attended on the 5th of April for a booking of 4. We arrived and were not on the booking list. This is despite me booking around 2 hours prior. Not a massive problem as was taken to a table and sat promptly.

We ordered a round of alcoholic drinks which came pretty quickly.

We ordered one sharing plate of nachos as a starter (We asked for them as a starter and not as a main). We alsobordered 3x portions of ribs and 1x corn burger and also ordered three more drinks.

35 minutes past before our drinks arrived. The waitress and barman could be seen talking about our drinks at the 30 minute mark, so clearly we were forgotten about.

At around the 1 hour mark we had to ask where our nacho starter was. 30 seconds after asking it arrived on our table. It was cold and not as described on your menu. Ingredients were missing and quite clearly not cooked as described.

2 minutes after our starter arrived, our mains arrived. Further cementing that our poorly described starter had infact been forgotten about.

The corn burger was three bits of small corn circles in a dried bun. No salad or extras and little effort had been made with this burger, especially for the price.

I ordered a rack of ribs. 10% of the rack was meat. The other 90% was nothing but fat. My other two friends ribs were likely 30% meat and 70% fat. I'd also argue that you are putting two different half racks of ribs together to make a full rack. So the consistency and size is not the same.

We found this place purely by walking past and hearing the jazz being played on the stairs. The menu on the fence looked really good so I did some research. I checked the reviews on Google and saw that you had 4.5 stars out of 5. The food reviews were extremely positive.

However, the music once you get inside the venue was not the same. The food quality and service is utter crap. The owner/manager is setting up these poor waiters/waitresses to fail due to their incompetence to run a business and the poor quality that goes with it.

You also have waitresses openly talking to each other about how slow the food service was too.

I've eaten at hundreds of restaurants and never experienced anything as has as...

Quick google search made me choose the Vault because the reviews were high! I didn’t actually read any! Had I of actually read reviews then we would have been spared an awful experience this evening.

First of all, on arrival we were greeted in a very, frosty, unwelcoming manner. The waitress was so miserable, didn’t crack a smile once! She exclaimed that I booked downstairs and that she would seat us upstairs because of our pushchair, this was said with her back turned looking at a computer screen.

My 5 year old ordered the kids fish fingers which albeit looked homemade had visible fish skin on which personally didn’t seem child friendly so she refused to eat that and her chips seemed like they were fried in a dirty fryer as they tasted stale. I ordered rosemary chips which tasted the same but with a dash of rosemary sprinkled on top.

My son ordered an adult pepperoni pizza which was very oily but he ate most of it none the less. Husband ordered chicken burger which he said was okay. My main was butternut chilli - this was served luke warm and wasn’t pleasant to eat so I had a few spoonfuls and that was enough for me.

Waitress did do a check back and I said was ok at the time but I was probably visibly annoyed and I think she picked up on this. I didn’t confront her about my food at the time because I didn’t want to cause a scene in front of my children.

We did mention about the chips when the bill arrived and said that we were not happy to pay the service charge that was automatically added to our bill.

Lastly, I would not call this place a gastropub, I’ve eaten in many and the food today didn’t come close to any of my experiences else where.

Left disappointed but happy to get out of there, ended up getting a food box from whole foods which was 10x nicer.

Probably a great hangout for drinks but wouldn’t recommend the food and service was shocking so on that basis we wont...

Came because we knew they did mussels. For starters, I had falafel, and she had the fried prawns in breadcrumbs. Falafel was lovely and soft inside, crispy texture on the outside served with a sprinkle of tahini all over and beautifully spiced with some lovely heat running through them. Prawns were delightfully crispy on the outside and moist on the inside, and the sauce they came with was sweet and a bit hot - I can't lie, they were absolutely killer, in a very good way. For the main, I decided on the farouj meshwi, which is, as I learned from the menu, a garlicked and spiced Lebanese grilled chicken dish, which came with roasted vegetables on a grilled flatbread. I think there was a sauce too, but I can't really remember, because beer! But this main was, again, perfectly spiced, not to mention juicy and grilled to perfection at the same time, with a beautiful garlic flavour. Her mussels were in a cream sauce (although other types of sauce, including maybe white wine (?) and a chorizo sauce (?) are available) and were also cooked very nicely. They have a very well-chosen and wide selection of beers, including a nice blonde ale from Ilkley, and a range of hoppy curiosities, fruit beers, plus sweet Belgian beers, which I didn't get round to trying this time. Aside from the quality of the food, the staff and management were very helpful, kind, and personable, and the atmosphere from the clientele was jocular and jovial. All in all, a wonderful experience and we will surely be back, if...