The Palm House Victoria Bar & Restaurant — Restaurant in London

We had an absolutely disastrous meal on Saturday. Waited nearly 2 hours for food, dishes all came at different times and some of the food was wrong, including serving beef to a vegetarian, even though we had pre-ordered due to our party size. Table of 18 people and not 1 person was impressed with the service or food. Waitress argued with my friend about removing the 12.5% service charge at the end. The only positive was the restaurant supervisor apologised for our experience and comped some of the drinks/food on a £500/£600+ bill.

I booked weeks in advance and got an email asking to pre-order our food, which we did. I had a phone call and sent an email ahead of our booking to confirm they had received our order. When we arrived at 6pm, our table was not ready due to bottomless brunch ending (fair enough - but perhaps consider taking bookings from 6:15pm to allow set up time? Not a good start because we were a big group just stood in the way for at least 10mins whilst staff were cleaning). The manager then told me that the food we had pre-ordered was from the old menu but they had lots of the same dishes (I did point out that perhaps it's worth changing the system as it defeats the purpose of pre-ordered food) so we made some last minute changes to our order based on availability of dishes.

Around 7:15pm I raised that some members of our party (around half) had not had anything at all to eat and we had been there over an hour. Some people in the group had finished 3 plates of food whilst others had nothing. Plates were coming out 10, 20mins apart from each other. 1 person got a side of chips significantly before their meal arrived. The last meal (my burger) which I had to remind the waiter we had not received, arrived at 7:50pm nearly 2 hours after we had arrived and I had sat waiting watching other people eat. When I complained, I was told that because a member of our party has coeliac that some of the food had to be cooked separately, which I completely appreciate, but still don't understand why this caused such a significant delay considering some non-GF dishes came out ages before others.

My vegetarian friend had ordered tacos and she was convinced they had beef in after 1 bite. When we took the plate to the supervisor he promised it was mushroom tacos because the way they differentiate a meat dish is if it has sweetcorn on... random. However, it smelled and looked like meat, it was tasted and confirmed by meat eaters. Then, after a second time complaining, the dish was replaced it smelled and looked different the second time. After this, on 2 occasions, a waiter brought over "beef tacos" and "chicken tacos" for this friend which we declined both times and stated again that she was vegetarian so we are certain the first tacos she were served had beef in - which is completely unacceptable. Again, everyone had pre-ordered food and the booking had asked for their names along with food order, so I don't know how it was possible to get it this wrong because the staff were reading from a printed list.

2 of our friends had to leave to catch their train and the waitress tried to split the bill evenly (even though they had told us at the beginning we could pay however we liked) and tried to charge them including a 12.5% service charge which had been miscalculated, at which point my friend explained we would not be paying a service charge because of the multiple errors with our meal and our negative experience.

At one point the waitress stood right near our table and was blowing bubbles from a tiny bubble wand that looked like a child's toy and seemed totally unphased. We couldn't understand how that was an acceptable use of a staff members time when people were waiting for service...

All round, an unbelievable experience that you wouldn't comprehend unless you were there to see it. Safe to say none of the 18 of us will be back and we won't recommend to friends.

Thank you to the supervisor for removing all beers and some food from the bill as a gesture. We...

Please read if a young girl! I booked a bottomless brunch for my birthday. The first disappointment came when I requested a downstairs table since I have been here before and the vibe isn’t great upstairs due to the dj being downstairs. However upon arrival after waiting 20 minutes for our table (after arriving on time) we were seated upstairs. However I did not let this ruin my birthday since it was on the day and the staff were really apologetic and did do their best to make me feel better. The main disappointment came after the brunch finished. We ate and the food was good and my friends drank (I do not drink but often try and book things involving alcohol due to my friends enjoying a drink) and they had no complaints about the free flowing drink and the staff were not stingy and were always topping up. We went downstairs because it is more fun there and I went into my bag to get my card out where I held my vape in my hand in order to get my card out. The bouncer (I did not get his name) powered over and immediately started shouting at me. “You can not vape in here” “why are you doing it” “are you stupid”. I politely explained to him that I was not vaping I was just holding it in order to get my card out. I was with 7 other girls who can support this claim, as well as a lady next to me stepped in and said he was being ridiculous and quite threatening towards a young girl. He proceeded to say “it’s loud in here I have to shout” to which I accepted and said sorry I’ll put it away. He then said “no I want to talk to you outside” and put his hand on my shoulder. I was wearing a birthday badge and had already not been happy with the table so I immediately started crying - on my birthday! I didn’t want to be kicked out. My friends then started to try and reason with him as well as the lady who vouched for me that I did not vape - I’ll admit he has a good eye for me holding my vape but there was no cloud of smoke or anything! A better way would have been for him to come over and just let me know that there is no vaping inside. So I took myself outside because I felt uncomfortable anyways - a man shouting at a 19 year old girl, touching my shoulder I felt really uncomfortable and violated. He then stood by the outside door to make sure I didn’t come back in, whilst smiling at me crying, seeing that I’m wearing a birthday badge. My night then had to end at 9pm, since we had no plans for afterwards and my birthday felt as if it was ruined. I’ve been to the Palm House before and had such a good time every time and even had a laugh with the bouncers the last time we came!! So please be weary of an older bouncer he might have just been having a bad day but him shouting at me and laughing at me cry wasn’t...

Booked dinner for my friends and I for my birthday the Saturday before last and left super disappointed with the service. Firstly, before we even stepped in the building the security outside were quite hostile towards us, we didn’t receive a greeting just a grunt and a look up and down from them and they proceeded to shout at my friend to ‘WAIT’ before stepping inside like she was a dog. I told them that they were being rude just to receive dirty looks.

We were directed upstairs to our table to find several dirty and empty. One of the staff told us to wait as they didn’t have a table ready which defeated the point in us making a booking. We did not receive an apology for this and were left to hang around awkwardly in the middle of the restaurant for 5/10 minutes. Once we were finally seated it took another half an hour to receive our first drinks and despite there being 6 or 7 staff members upstairs we couldn’t seem to get anyone’s attention.

The food was okay however we did not find the sharing platters big enough for 3-4 people as advertised and ended up having to order extra food. My vegetarian friend was handed a meat option and when we asked what it was from our order the waiter said he didn’t know. It’s a good job we worked this out as she would have probably started eating. When clearing our plates away the same waiter was particularly rude and kept gesturing for us to hand him the plates rather than picking them up himself, on one occasion clicking his fingers at us to give him the plates which was really awkward.

In the whole two hours there we only managed to order 3 drinks each as it was almost impossible to get anyone’s attention and in the end we asked for the service charge to be taken off our bill as we felt it was really poor. We were asked why however there was no effort to make it right. To top it off the waitress who gave us the bill didn’t come back over and started standing around chatting so my friend had to go and ask her to come over with the card machine as we were in a rush for other plans.

Having booked this for a birthday meal and with the place being almost advertised as a venue for celebrations etc it just felt like there was no effort to make it special at all. We received no apologies and there was no acknowledgment that it was a special occasion. I know better than to expect this but at brunch the following day at a different venue, they really went out of their way to make it special.

All in all, really disappointed with our experience here and will be...