Duke of Monmouth — Restaurant in Oxford

The place is a charming typical British pub that seemed to be a cute and good place to have an evening meal. But it turned out to be a quite disappointing experience. We arrived around 8:45 pm, there was no one around to welcome us. We waited a good 5 minutes for a waitress to arrive. We told her we wanted to have dinner, and she urged us to sit down and choose a dish quickly because the kitchen closes at 9. We told her we'll have 3 fish and chips's, she noded, said ok and went out through a door we thought was the kitchen door. While we were waiting we couldn't hear each other speak because the volume of TVs was way too high. The table was sticky and there was a strong smell of pee . After having waited for about 20 minutes we decided to have a drink until the food arrives. I went to the bar but it was very crowded, so I lined up in the queue. People were getting served before me (despite having arrived later) because they were friends with people ahead of me in the line. After 25 minutes it was eventually my turn, so I asked for 2 coktails and a beer while waiting on the food. The waitress told me there were no cocktails (so why are they written on the menu?) and asked me which food I was talking about, because there was no food in preparation and the kitchen was now closed. It turns out she didn't order our food at the kitchen because she wanted us to come and pay for it at the bar, although she told us "ok" when we asked for the fish and chips's and she never mentioned that we had to pay already and order at the bar if we wanted to eat. We've been waiting an hour for nothing. We left the bar still hungry, thirsty and rather frustrated...

awful experience. the pub itself is lovely but we arrived to 2 extremely miserable girls working behind the bar, no customer service, not even a smile, just making us fully aware on a very quiet Saturday that we're a huge inconvenience. My partner and I were very kind and polite the entire time, which makes it even worse. the girl behind the bar couldn't be bothered to wash a cocktail shaker to make a simple cocktail and asked me to come back later to ask for a cocktail. I offered to help her make the cocktail as she didn't know and her colleague was ignoring her every time she walked past. The 2nd girl that kept ignoring the one behind the bar who was running food was the most unpleasant, had a face like a slapped ass and walked off the bar halfway through serving me and made it very clear she didn't want to be there, her attitude was disgusting and rude. a word of advice, DON'T work in hospitality if you can't provide the absolute bare minimum. If you don't want to be there, don't be. people are spending your hourly wage on one round, the least you can do is find some kindness within yourselves and make people feel their hard earned money is being well spent. There are also many people that would be really grateful to have your jobs in this current climate, so maybe you can be swapped...

The food took an hour to come out. It's microwaved food... Why would it ever take an hour? The pub wasn't even busy. We went up to the bar staff twice to ask them for our missing food, they tried to excuse the lateness by saying it was busy (again, it was not busy- less then half capacity I would say). They said it would only be an extra two minutes, we waited an additional 15 and asked again. Finally the food came. It was not worth the wait. I had dry shrivelled up chicken wings and firery chips and cheese on the side with barely any cheese. My chips looked like someone had thrown up on them, picture attached. My friend got a vegetarian burger and chips with cheese, again with barely any cheese (are they rationing cheese here? Is this another commodity that will be snatched away from us on the 31st of October?) The buns on the burger were burnt horribly. We asked if we could get a new burger, perhaps one that wasn't burnt? They came back with the same burger but with new buns. Obviously this meant that at this point the patty was stone cold and sandwiched between two tepid buns. She could barely eat it. Overall this visit was disappointing to say the least. I would avoid...