The Old White Bear — Restaurant in London

What a pity! My husband and I had been here before and had a marvellous time. They put us by the 'cosy' fire as my husband had put 'a cosy position if.possible ', which impressively they did this time as well.. We.artived at 2pm. The young lady remembered us which felt good. We were informed that the food might take a while and we said we weren't worried, that was fine. We had a couple of delicious bloody Mary's and then ordered. The parfait was delicious and we had high hopes for the lamb. At 3:15 a 'reserved' was plonked on our table and briskly told 'this table is needed for 4pm'! We hadn't had our main meal.yet and nothing had been said about it when we came in.. Bearing in mind our patient nature over the speed of the food it felt sour. My husband complained to the girl who.put it there, giving all the arguments I have stated and she moved the reserved sign to a different table, where 2 people were leaving anyway. We sat there bemused and wondering what was going on. Then, 5 minutes or so later were told the lamb had gone. It took them 50 minutes to.tell us this!! We had pork.instead which wasn't as good as last time, which was also a disappointment. While all this was going on the lady who had tried to get out table was walking around fuming. She was clearly a local who expected her way. It turned out she had walked in and demanded the table we were sat at. She had to sit somewhere else and stared over at us. As soon as we got ready to go, she stormed over and told a group pf 3 that she was sitting at the table.she even moved her food!! Wow!! Why do pubs let bossy locals sour it for good paying...

People who come to Google reviews to spend their emotions kinda suck & today we traveled from west London to have Sunday lunch here with a friend we had not seen in years. The roast dinner was good even if the “lamb” was tough & fatty. The issue was the music. In a packed pub it was playing so loudly we couldn’t hear eachother - moreover the same tiny selection of songs was being played over and over in a loop till it felt like some kind it torture - I got up from my seat six times to ask for the music to be turned down (or off) - the first request was ignored, the second resulted in a slight reduction in volume, the third request made no difference, nor the fourth, on the last request I pointed out the song wasn’t changing - and still it went on. The sixth time I got up I told the manager nicely that I would be writing this review unless something was done and he just argued with me and told me they had reduced the volume each time I asked (they had not) and that we were listening to iTunes. After one pleasant afternoon at TOW. I was about to become a regular and now I’ll...

A welcome return after an eight year absence, though now under new management: the main customer rooms are snug and cosy, with a white bear theme running throughout. A nice range of well-maintained cask beers are served, and now food is back too.

We visited on a busy Saturday afternoon and had tasty, warming lentil stews, a veal escalope and (I think) a steak. We all agreed the food quality was good, although, disappointingly, one dish came out a full five minutes before the other three and the table service was mostly slap-dash amateur at best, to genuinely dire: 2 of our 3 servers wearing mopey, dour faces with no charm, engagement and lacking basic skills like checking if further drinks were required.

I'm hoping that I can continue to support this well-beloved neighbourhood place, but as the (unprovoked) sour-faced staff thing has happened on both of two visits now, it seems to me that management needs to properly get on top of an unnecessarily distracting issue, and invest in some basic hospitality training with the junior...