The Sun — Restaurant in London

I had my engagement party at The Sun this year and wanted to write a review about one of the members of staff who worked that night and the handling of our subsequent complaint by the current, newly appointed manager.

We hired a floor of the pub for our engagement drinks from 4.30 pm until 1am. The female member of staff who was responsible for looking after the first floor area we had hired was rude, unprofessional and incompetent. To give a few examples of the numerous complaints we received from our guests;

She wrote a large sign on the bar indicating to guests that the alcohol I had ‘pre-bought’ for our engagement toasts (over £400 worth of alcohol) was ‘over there’ and ‘free for anyone to take’. I had not expressed any desire for this to be done. I have still not had this issue addressed by the management.

She left the bar unattended numerous times to go and smoke outside, leaving the door wide open. When my fiancée’s uncle asked her to close the door, because it was cold, she rudely said ‘no’.

She was extremely rude to several guests, refusing to serve them for no reason.

She was extremely rude to me when I asked her if she could dim the lights for a birthday cake that I wanted to bring out for my fiancée who celebrated her birthday at midnight.

When my fiancée asked her if she was still serving, as it appeared she wasn’t based on her behaviour and attitude, she said “hang on a minute” and continued to clear away and keep Hannah waiting. To be followed, after Hannah asked if she was ok as she clearly wasn’t, she said “well one of your guests shat all over the toilet seat which I’ve had to clean up”. Two points here: firstly, there were numbers of the public who were not part of the party and the pubs kitchen staff who were using the toilet throughout the afternoon/evening and secondly, another member of staff said she never even cleaned it up, he did. So she also lied. There is no proof this was caused by anyone of our guests. (It is also worth noting here that there was no toilet roll in the downstairs toilets for the majority of the afternoon/evening, hence why more people had been using the upstairs toilet).

She turned the lights on at midnight and rudely started asking people to leave when the agreed hours were 4.45 to 1am.

I complained in writing to The Sun approximately a week after our party asking for a full investigation. The new manager agreed to undertake this. When the manager contacted me his attitude was typical of someone who couldn’t care less about customer satisfaction or the fact he had an incompetent and rude member of staff employed. The manager in fact directly accused my guests of several things that were totally untrue, insulting and rude. For example, he said that one of our guests had called the barmaid overweight and another had told her to stop wearing so much mascara. He also suggested that our party had been problematic to other members of staff. Worth noting here that not a single guest was approached by security or a duty manager all night.

Finally, 2 months later, we have been given a voucher for the group of pubs The Sun is part of, which we appreciate, and intend to spend as far from The Sun as possible.

Just read this review, posted a month or so before our experience. That’s the member of staff.

REVIEW: Food was ok but ran out of lots of things on the menu. Lady behind the bar with short hair possibly one of the rudest people who has ever served me a pint!!! Like

Response from the owner: 2 months ago I'm terribly sorry you didn't enjoy your time at the sun, Often on a Sunday afternoon we do start to run out of roasts, that's the price we pay for fresh produce. But I am sorry we disappointed you. next time you are coming in drop me an email and i will make sure we save you a roast. As for the rude staff i would love to hear more details on that so i could make sure this doesn't...

Myself and a couple of friends went to The Sun this evening and our experience was extremely poor. We went in for a Sunday roast at around 18:30. The pub was really busy as we expected for a Sunday in the run up to Christmas and upon ordering we were informed that they had run out of roasts so they gave us a menu with the food options that were left. We ordered our food and drinks, one of the drinks we tried to order had run out as well, otherwise we were pretty happy with the alternatives. I haven't experienced food running out before but nevertheless I can completely understand that it happens. Our food came and the gravy which came with my meal was stone cold and some of the food on my plate was lukewarm. I asked a team member if they could asked for it to be heated up which they did for me and the food was overall really lovely. After our meal, we stayed on and got a few rounds in and at around 22:40 we went outside for a cigarette. We took our drinks with us and when we went back in were told by a staff member that we couldn't go back in. We asked why as it says on Google that the pub closes at 23:00. The man we spoke to said 'they can close whenever they want' which I assume he was referring to the bar staff and that there were no customers despite the fact there were customers including us at least. I'm not sure whether the guy we spoke to worked at the pub or not as we saw him drinking there as well but all the same he came across as rude. My friend asked if he could at least use the toilet to which he replied 'you can use the toilets in another pub'. After being refused to use the toilet we asked if he could use the toilet and we'd leave, still at this point it was 22:45, 15 minutes before closing. He eventually let my friend use the toilet and then we had to leave where he gave us plastic cups. I feel the overall experience was very poor demonstrated by the lack of customer service. The fact that the pub closed early, I can understand, however whoever the guy was staff member or not, could have explained to us in a much better way rather than asking us to leave even though there was no warning to let us know that they were closing early or at least let us finish of our drinks with the 15 minutes remaining. Usually in pubs, staff come around to let us know when they're closing rather than refuse us entry and also refuse to let us use the toilets despite spending the best part of our evening there eating and drinking. I'm very disappointed with the service, and having worked in customer service myself previously I understand that this time of year can be very hectic and stressful for some people however this is not an excuse for rudeness. It was my first visit and I doubt I'll be returning again due to lack of basic customer...

Disappointing and disorganised.

I went with as a group and had booked for 2pm on Sunday. We were all excited for Sunday roast. However, after placing our order the waiting staff returned to say that the beef was out and only 1 pork roast was left. Out of the 7 of us, 2 had ordered beef and 2 pork. Not ideal. We swapped to different roasts only for the waiting staff to return to say in that time, the 1 remaining pork roast had been sold at the till in the meantime. We didn’t make a fuss, but that was quite unfair and upsetting.

When food arrived, one chicken roast was clearly forgotten or lost. No doubt in the reordering faff. When that finally arrived, it only had cabbage. Missing the roasted vegetables our other chicken chooser had.

Additionally, we were offered extra gravy (unclear if this was an apology or just kind serving). It was excitedly accepted by our 3 nut roasters, whose gravy portions were much smaller than everyone else’s. However the three extra gravey never came!

We ordered drinks at the bar to make splitting the bill easier and lime soda seemed to have some sort of dynamic price system. Two regular glasses of lime soda were £2.80 then upon a second order two pints of lime soda was £2.70. Then a third lime soda was purchased, it came in a medium sized glass and was £2.20 for one. None of us could make any sense of that!

Two wanted desserts so they ordered and paid at the bar. Unsurprisingly at this point, the waiting staff returned to say they were out of tiramisu that 1 of them had ordered.

Out of the 7 of us only one person had a problem free experience. Not really what you expect when you go out for a nice meal with friends. Roast should not be sold out at 2pm on a Sunday. If you’re going to boast roasts served all day, at least have more than half of the options available! It is a nice pub and the food was tasty, but not the Sunday roast we had planned. A positive was that we booked for 6 and in the end we had 7 and re seating us...