The Lucas Arms — Restaurant in London

Family birthday in the function room.. worst 'buffet' food I've ever come across by miles. Arrived very slowly over a couple of hours. No plates! Actually plates came out later, about 6 of them! No cutlery! All 'brown' food. Biggest pork pie ever, cut into only 8 giant '3 man' pieces for a group of thirty, meat in it tough, (how do you make pork pie meat tough?), over flavoured with nutmeg, pastry soggy, undercooked, flavourless. 'Dips'... (ie. Tom sauce, brown sauce, BBQ sauce, mayo!) ..one tiny dish of each and no spoons so I had to ladle mayo out of the little dish with two chips put together so as to avoid double dipping. Oh the chips! The only non-revolting food item.. one small bowl, came out about two hours after the party started/rest of the food. Some kind of savoury dumpling which I found not edible. Some sandwiches with retro filings (I hear these were ok). Mac and cheese crunchy bites (not too awful) and some sausage shaped crunchy something which no-one could agree what it was. (Veggie or fish?). Some other things which were burnt and I did not attempt them :-/ Also it was not possible to choose in advance what would be in the buffet. And no special diets were catered for though they did say there will be some vegetarian, which there was. I didn't know food this bad still existed! In fact I think even in the 70s you couldn't have made it this bad. People...

For a smallish pub the food was really top notch, 2 different kinds of chips served (salted, rosemary fries and nice traditional chunky ones). The chef definitely has an eye for detail and really takes pride in producing some excellent dishes and decent portion sizes. My fellow diners and I had the Steak & Ale pie, 6oz burger and Scampi, all served with chips.

I have to really thank the staff, in particular, Michael, who was a very nice and kind person and a real pleasure to meet. Drinks prices were reasonable for London. I had a pint of Beavertown Neck Oil IPA for about £6. These days, around here, believe it or not, that's pretty good value. The house white was pretty decent also.

At the time of my visit, Wednesday early evening, plenty of folk were tucking into their nice pub grub and having a quiet drink though it wasn't particularly busy at all with plenty of tables spare. Healthy I would say, with nice normal looking people you could chat with. The décor was good, tables very clean and well tended to.

Lastly, the toilets were good and clean also although I didn't see an accessible loo, the men's had a couple of steps to go up. Not sure about the ladies... (no steps on the outside at least is all I can recall). Overall, a very nicely maintained and run pub that was a real treasure to find.

Staff: 5/5 Food 5/5 Drinks 4/5 Atmos...

Hello 'my lovelies' - for my experience, we had to clear a table to sit for dinner, fortunately there were several in this state for us to choose from... Even though we mentioned we were there for dinner, they didn't let us know which meals were not available, resulting in us needing to order three different times, each requiring us to wait in line at the bar.

The food was plain and the portions were small, unfortunately the price did not reflect this. Speaking of price, they like to add an extra service free / tip without your knowledge while entering the cost - this is mentioned in an earlier review and clearly not resolved. Moreover, I've not experienced this practice anywhere else in London during my stay.

As part of our order I requested two seasonal hot chocolate drinks and in all the excitement of them trying to figure out how to add it onto the order (I had to give them the price from the menu) they missed one for our table...

They had a small sign on the bar asking for review's, so here is mine... I should have got the Tesco meal...