The Crown & Anchor — Restaurant in London

Today, my husband and I popped into the Crown and Anchor, with our son, as previously been welcoming and helpful for a quick baby nappy change or pregnant persons visit to the loo. With the last manager I’d had comfortably had a few frank discussions with him about how the “accessible toilet” doubled as a storage room for boxes of toilet paper and two stinky mops with buckets.

A couple of months ago during the first trimester of my pregnancy these mop buckets nearly triggered a bout of vomiting as the musty mop stench is vile. The lights are dim and a couple of months ago the toilet was in no way accessible for a wheelchair user or a mother with a pram. I raised my concerns in a friendly and direct way and the manager took it on the chin as it was simply the truth. When I returned a few weeks later most of the boxes were gone, but the buckets were still there.

Today, I hadn’t realised it was under new management - that was a painful discovery. After this visit, our impression I can only describe the new manager Julie as fake, passive aggressive and defensive.

Before heading in to the toilet, my husband and son went ahead to sort his nappy, and I just grabbed the key and lightly said are the buckets and mops still in there?

Julie said yes.

And I said oh dear, what a shame as they are smelly and inconvenient when we use that room. They really should be moved.

She (with accusatory eyes and arms defensively folded) then said, “excuse me are you having a drink while you visit here?”

And I said no (actually my husband was hoping for a coffee and we were even considering where to have lunch). I added that as I’m pregnant I’m legally entitled to use the toilets of public houses and mentioned that my son needed a nappy change.

Julie said, yes that’s right. She gave me an insincere smile, and said as there’s no other space for them that’s where they will stay. She added, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.

I replied and said, “I think you’re lying.”

As I walked to join my husband, I added “well I’ll remove the buckets as we use the space and I might replace them when we leave…”

Who wants to be shunting around musty smelly mop buckets when they are just popping to the loo?!

She half followed and was adding excuse me?

Then my son was trying to avoid being in the toilet, as it stank and was dim.

The nail in the coffin, so to speak, was that as my husband was passing the bar as we exited… she said to him, “My deepest sympathies for your life.”

My husband said “excuse me?”

I then joined after putting the mop buckets back in the “accessible” toilet to return the key, and saw him looking shocked. And I asked her what she said. With arms folded, she repeated the phrase again. It was clearly a dig at the “struggle” he must have sharing a life with me.

And she was happy to see us connect the dots. I mentioned that the vibe of the pub was very different since the previous manager left. She said ‘yes, it is…´ with a smile.

My husband works in hospitality serving multi millionaires and billionaires. He is an expert at managing tense conversations with a potential customer. To see such poor customer service and communication, delivered by no other than the manager of a public house was shocking.

For a manager to say something incredibly rude to someone (my husband) who wasn’t even a part of the initial dialogue was catty and displayed a huge lack of customer service skills.

Ultimately, I was in the right. The mops and buckets DON’T belong in the “ACCESSIBLE TOILET”. She had no grace and definitely no skills with navigating a slightly more complicated conversation. And clearly didn’t feel able to admit being in the wrong.

PS. Put some air freshener in there!! And change the lights.

PPS. The pub lost custom today… and...

Sooo.... disappointing I had been really looking forward to going to this pub as I had been told that it is had vegan options and is a lovely pub. I travelled from Hastings to Chiswick to have lunch here. I was impressed by the decor and style of the pub. It was clean, beautifully traditional but contemporary at the same time. The menu has a good selection with various vegetarian and a couple of vegan options. The problem was the service, presentation and value. The pub had no more than 6 people in it when we went, so it wasn’t busy. We ordered and after about 15 mins I saw our food being placed on the counter. It sat there for a bit. The chef then added a few more bits to the plates and then the food sat there for a bit more. Some minutes later he came back and added a flag with a slice of gurkhin to the burger. Another while later the waiter collected 2 of the dishes and delivered them. My son had ordered fish and chips. The fish looked impressive but the chips were sadly lacking. There were 10 chips in total! We pointed the lack of chips out to the waiter who then left to see what he could do. The third meal was still sitting on the counter by the bar. The waiter still didn’t bring it over. By this time it had been sat there for quite some time, maybe 15 minutes. Eventually I had to ask the waiter to bring it. It was a beyon meat burger which I had been looking forward to. It cost nearly £14 (I paid and additional £1.50 for the 3 tiny slices of avocado). It was delivered cold by this time and had no chips or other garnish. Just a burger on a plate with the extra avocado upgrade. I was very disappointed in the service, the presentation and ultimately the food and value. When I questioned the lack of chips/salad and the waiter pointed out that these options are another upgrade. Overall it was a poor experience and very disappointing. We didn’t bother staying for dessert or anything else. I was hoping that it would be somewhere nice to have lunch when I visit my son who lives next door but the experience was...

Utter disappointment ,more than a year later this place finally opens, I was invited for a dinner with my friend who lives locally too, the acoustics are awful in the dining room you need to shout to be heard, the waiting team was clueless except the guy with many tattoos , he did good job. We waited 25 minutes for drinks, the food was so so disappointing, really a "celebrated" chef to launch with such awful menu shows hes lazy and complacent and thinks anything he offers to diners they eat up and be happy. Caponata was such a disappointment at every level, The duck was fat fried with fatty oily mayonnaise ( 1980s throwback) shredded celeriac and cardboard fat cooked tasteless potatoes, the Barolo braised oxtail with polenta soup was at best mediocre . The rabbit is not even worth a mention, and then the lackluster appearance, presentation of desserts, what a let down. Really with such ingredients it is criminal to serve and plate such bad food. nothing is more upsetting than thinking that we as diners do not know what good food tastes and looks like, the pricing is ridiculous too.

Spoke to both tables on either side of us and fellow diners pretty much shared all our thoughts and had some very sharp words to describe their thoughts of the food...