The Queens Head — Restaurant in London

We’ve enjoyed lots of meals here, but today was disappointing. Items missing from our order, being left with no cutlery while our food went cold (while staff just stood behind the bar) and an aggressive and unhelpful manageress. My husband’s meal was really cold by the time she brought the missing peppercorn sauce. Her attitude was awful - defensive and unfriendly. They acted as if the things that had gone wrong were our fault (my husband was told he hadn’t ordered any peppercorn sauce, for example) and did nothing to make the situation better. We won’t be going back there. They knocked a ridiculous £2 off the bill…the price of the peppercorn sauce. Rubbish. Lazy, unfriendly service and a rude, aggressive manageress. She lost some good customers today.

Response to the manageress: I think your aggressive comments kind of prove our point.

We are not Google Review scammers. This is only the second review I have ever written! The first one was for a lovely meal in a pub in South Norwood. We are a family with two young kids. We’ve had some really great meals at The Queens Head and didn’t criticise the food today, just the inept and unfriendly service. Your staff could have quickly put things right, but didn’t. We had to get our own cutlery-nobody came with it and all the food was going cold. When my husband ordered, he just checked that my peas weren’t ‘buttered peas’ as lots of dishes on your menu offer (I don’t like butter), but we certainly didn’t request no peas. And he did ask for sauce. We came to the pub, like we have many times before, for a relaxed family lunch. However, we had to chase around getting cutlery, salt and pepper, peas and sauce (which came out first stone cold - you didn’t mention that). What could have been a great meal was totally ruined by your staff not doing the basics. Even then, if you had offered a friendly apology and perhaps just knocked the price of my husband’s cold meal off the bill, as a courtesy, then we would have been happy to come back. We wrote reviews as a last resort because we left feeling absolutely awful. I really hope that people reading these reviews and your inaccurate -and actually quite upsetting response-will think twice about...

I don't know how this pub is still in business. Had lunch there with my wife, daughter and grandson, it was absolutely appalling! I'll go as far and say it was disgusting and they have the cheek to charge £high teens for each dish. Had fish and chips:- fish was thin as a pancake, all curled up, almost a complete circle, hardly any fish content, tasteless hard dried peas and a scattering of chips. My immediate reaction was to send it back, but my wife didn't want to create a scene in front of other diners. The steak pie was no better, seemed pre bought, rather than home made. Not a generous filling, accompanied by a small pot ( with no handle for ease of pouring) of hot watery, greasy gravy, tasteless dried peas and chips. Finally, the tuna baguette, disgusting!! When you think baguette, you think beautifully baked golden brown and crusty. This one was white as a sheet, no colour and not crusty at all and soft as cotton wool. In fact, it looked and tasted like a pre- baked baguette.(before it is cooked) The tuna filling was very overpowering with vinegar, you couldn't taste the tuna. I hope the management will take on board these points and aim to improve, rather than go on the defensive and blame the customers. Clearly, the food served at this pub is sub standard and it isn't fair to charge the public such high prices for such poor quality food. We all walked away very disappointed and dissatisfied with the experience. The owners of this pub would benefit from researching existing pubs who serve excellent food and implementing the findings or...

Brought my dad here on bank holiday Monday but when we got to the register and asked for 2 cream teas the gent at the counter just said "no". Despite there being a free table, him having just served the customers in front of us with take away coffees and scones on the counter in front of him, he said that it was far too busy in the restaurant and that the wait would take forever. Completely understandable to be busy on the bank holiday(!), but he offered no apology and embarrassed us in front of other customers who snickered at us as we made our way back out. Very poor service and despite our requested order being incredibly easy (as specified earlier the scones were literally in front of him and tea only requires some bags in the pot and hot water from the machine on the counter) we were turned away without any hesitation or apology. Even just a "We're sorry, we are at capacity and really busy so will be unable to serve you today" would have been fine in my opinion - but no such remark, just a straight up "no". The worst part was being laughed out the door by other customers which was...