Ye Olde Red Lion — Restaurant in London

My friend and I were shocked yesterday by the service and actions of the staff! After we had ordered our food from the only menu on the table ( my meal cost £13.50) the lady behind the bar brought out the 'lunch time menu' which showed I could have bought my meal for £6.50. We had already ordered at that stage. Her excuse? "I have only just found these menus"!!! And then - instead of offering us a discount - she said - "Oh well, it's probably not that different".

Not that different? Our meals cost us double - for no fault of our own!

If it's "not that different" then why do you have a lunchtime menu with special prices?It's not our job to ask if you have a special menu, it it? We politely ordered our food - just to find out we'd paid more for the same meal than anyone else. Not due to our own mistake, but the pub's!

And, before we ordered lunch, we ordered 2 glasses of house red. The lady went to look for some and said it had 'run out'. So, guess what? We had to buy the (more expensive) Merlot. I would not have complained about that BUT on top of the rip off lunch, it was an expensive afternoon.

Everyone is struggling financially. What you did yesterday was rip off 2 customers who will never return. Not that you care - had you, you could have reimbursed us when you discovered your 'mistake' with the menu. BUT not a bit of it. What you did instead was take advantage of YOUR inefficiency to rip us off.

My advice to potential customers- when you go in there, ask for the lunch time menu as the staff will probably be hiding it again.

In fact, don't go there at all, go to Wild Wood (opposite Waitrose). That's where we usually go. We thought we'd find somewhere else for our weekly lunch. BIG mistake!

The staff in Wild Wood are friendly and efficient. They have a lunch time menu which - guess what? - they SHARE with the customers!

The response (below) makes absolutely no sense. Of course they wanted to give us the meals we ordered - we ordered them from the expensive menu because your staff member only produced the lower price one AFTER we ordered. She even made a point of saying that it would have been cheaper on the menu she brought out later. OBVIOUSLY your staff wanted to give us the meals we ordered - due to their incompetence, you made more money from us. What they SHOULD have done is voided the original order and given us the reduced price. In that case, I would not have written a scathing (and apt) review and you would not have had to write such a nonsensical response and make yourselves...

Where do I start. We booked a Christmas lunch here in October for boxing day for a party of 10. The pub asked for our orders starters/mains etc. We arrived at the pub 40 mins before our timeslot at 1pm the tables had been mixed up with another booking for that day which meant they had to move us to the other side of the pub which was annoying but fine. The manager then asked us to provide the booking reference with the orders on it which they couldn't now find bearing in mind we provided the orders via email and also on a4 paper directly to the chef week before. After being seated and having to wait 30 minutes at the bar for drinks as only one bar lady was serving and the bar had over 20 people waiting we finally got drinks. Our starters then arrived some had prawns which were awful some had soup which were actually not that bad. Now the mains and this is no exaggeration every main that was served was either too cold or barley edible 8 out of our party ate 1 quarter of their dinner and left the rest. Then the desserts arrived the ice cream was fine as its only ice cream and its hard to get that wrong. The rest of our party had cheesecake which was awful it was definitely from a packet and was microwaved to defrost and left too long so we ended up with hot cheesecakes which nobody ate. We paid the bill and the manager agreed to remove the desserts as they were untouched all in all a pretty bad experience especially when your out with your family trying to enjoy a Christmas lunch together. I felt for the barmaid that day being on her own but come on its boxing day what do you expect lots of family's go to the local pub to enjoy the festivities. I gave the pub 2 stars only because the beer was nice and wine was good apart from that I would have given a 1 star review. Ye old red lion you need to be doing the simple stuff alot better there was a catalogue of errors from start to finish.i cannot recommend the pub this...

great location and traditional pub interior but terribly managed! what a waste! reserved for Sunday roast at 1pm. nice table no problem. menu looked great and went to bar to order. of the 4 meat options only 2 available. cauliflower cheese unavailable. how can so many standard menu items be unavailable ?and if this is the case, communicate it on a board or sign the bar so that the customer doesn’t order things that aren’t available.when the meals arrived quality was satisfactory but only one slice of meat which was not enough. veg, potatoes and yorkie ok. kids menu missing gravy and yorkie. table next to us complained about meagre meat portion and were told that normally should be two slices and chef was at fault. when ordering dessert, same problem, of 6 options only 2 available! ordered eton mess sundae and bread n butter pudding that came with fresh strawberries and custard respectively according to the menu. sundae arrived and clearly the strawberries were not fresh but tinned and the pudding came with ice cream not custard. when these were raised to staff we were told ‘oh we know but we don’t have fresh strawberries or custard’. I said this was unacceptable and asked for refund. was offered refund for one desert which I refused and asked for £24 back to cover all problems. this was paid to me in cash without issue. there were a few other customers complaining and asking for refunds. the service staff blamed new management and understood our dissatisfaction but don’t need them to side with us, need...