The Grumpy Mole - Cheam — Restaurant in London

Very disappointed at our visit today. We have gone many times - my mum, my little brother and I, to have lunch. We always order the same - the Cajun chicken wrap with a portion of chips and a pint of lemonade, no salad. We went this time and sat and ordered straight away, and my mum expressed how we last came a while ago (as she had been ill a lot recently). We were told the wraps had changed but we’d love it and it was just that the sauce was more mixed in. So we placed our order as normal, not really understanding the sauce comment and thinking maybe a while ago the sauce used to be separate. We placed all orders no avocado, 2/3 orders with no salad and one of those with no crisps, one with salad and crisps. We received all 3 wraps with salad inside of the wraps (where there never used to be before and where this is NOT detailed on the menus, we were also not informed of this when they said about changes or asked to specify when we said no salad).

The wraps were 70% salad and room temperature - not even warm. The chips were hotter and brought out first. The staff saw us picking at food and asked if all was okay with the meal and my mum said she was very disappointed as we weren’t told there would be salad in the wraps and had asked for no salad on two of the orders. In response, the male staff replied “Oh, I’m sorry to hear about that. We’ll remember you for next time” and never offered any solution or consolation for the issues. They also had to take my mum’s order back as it was wrong and she wasn’t given salad on the side where hers was a normal order.

We have gone so many times over the last year/2 years and were so disappointed to see that the prices have gone up but the food is just being padded out with salad and less meat is now being included. £4.25 for what little portion of chips and almost £10 for a wrap that is mostly salad and a handful of crisps is awful. We also sat for a while waiting for plates to be cleared and were given the bill before all plates were even cleared.

I will attach a picture of how filled the wraps used to be for comparison (the picture with the chicken satay on skewers in). If you want to know how many skewers you get for that price then hopefully that also helps you to see that it is only 3 small skewers for £9.75. That was a different disappointment from last year.

To top it all off, I just want to add that my little brother (I say little, but he’s 17 now), has Asperger’s and it is the only place we can get him to go to eat out in public (as he usually loves the food and the only way to have it is to eat in). But after today’s visit he has expressed he does not want to go again as he felt the staff didn’t care and he felt very uncomfortable eating his food and having had to pick out the salad from his wrap. He even said that it is not worth it for the price being charged. He had even asked for mayo/ketchup and been ignored by staff who had asked if we wanted dips and not waited for the reply. This is very sad for us as a family as we never get to enjoy meals altogether, even at home, and now will not be eating as a family at the grumpy mole again. Very sad indeed.

I would also like to add that the lack of a proper disability space is an issue every time we go. I have attached a picture so you can see the one space put down as the ‘disabled space’. It is just a normal space marked as a disabled bay, with no extra room...

We went here for my partners birthday. We used to come here quite often and hadn't been here for quite some time, so decided to choose here for the meal. The drinks were nice, it was the service and the majority of food that let it all down. The pate came with 3 small bits of bread for the starter, which was a let down. The other 2 starters were ok. Warm, not freshly cooked hot. My partner ordered the steak on the stone, and out of habit, requested how she would like it cooked, but did specify she wanted it on the stone. Having re-read the menu, it does say if you want the chef to cook the steak to say how you want it cooked, however, it came rarer than was asked and only 1/4 of the steak was eaten. I think some clarification with customers in future would be handy, so customers order correctly. When we said, I thought it came on a stone, we got a sharp rude reply saying, "well you asked for it to be cooked". There was no further explanation or suggestion to bring it out on a stone. The sauce for the fish arrived with a skin, of sorts, on it, so it had been sitting ready for a little while. The dish was warm at best. Why didn't we send food back, get more drinks or speak to a member of staff? Not once throughout our meal did anyone come out to ask us how our food was, when we were going to send food back, there wasn't anyone at the main bar. We were going to have a dessert and more drinks, however, that much time had passed that on a single dish, there were 10 flies and 2 wasps. Yes we were sitting outside, and hitting away a few insects for a minute or 2 is fine, but we waited and while and moved the plates so we didn't have to keep doing so. We decided to just ask for the bill and leave. Overall, we were very disappointed and saddened by the service and food and that my partner didn't have the birthday meal she deserved. We have background in hospitality, so we would have rectified the issues if we could speak to staff in a timely manner. It wasn't busy at the time and there wasn't really too much of an excuse or reason for the delays or lack of interaction. The member of staff we asked for the bill wasn't any of the original members of staff we interacted with. Sadly, we will not be returning and we do...

We visited for an impromptu lunch on a Monday afternoon and ordered two chicken, ham, and leek pies. When the food arrived, we immediately noticed that the pies contained no ham. We hadn’t requested any modifications—what happened next was both offensive and unacceptable.

We overheard the manager questioning the waitress, saying, “It has pork in it,” clearly implying that, based on our ethnicity, we wouldn’t want pork. This assumption was not only ignorant but deeply insulting. We are more than capable of reading a menu and understanding the ingredients. If there had been any doubt, the appropriate and respectful course of action would have been to ask us directly—not to make baseless assumptions rooted in stereotypes.

To make matters worse, the pie itself was terrible—just chunks of chicken drowning in a bland cream sauce. When we raised our concerns, the staff appeared at a loss for words, offering no real apology or accountability. The entire experience revealed a shocking lack of cultural sensitivity and basic hospitality.

We left feeling both disappointed and disrespected. An experience we will not forget—and certainly not one...