Sovereigns — Restaurant in Portsmouth

Unfortunately we didn't have a great experience here. We decided to book a table on the way back from a holiday week away to allow the children to let of some steam at the whacky warehouse after a long car journey. (This part was great, clean, tidy and relatively inexpensive). Upon arrival the male at the bar told us to let him know if we wanted to eat in the pub part or the whacky warehouse, as we'd need to use the app to order1. We chose to eat in the pub and used the app to purchase food. We were told to sit at table 27, when going to sit there, there was a group already there so we were asked to use a different table (fine by us as it was bigger and more room for the pram etc). We ordered on the app - 2 separate orders for the same table - to table 27 prior to being moved as we were told to by the bar tender. This was at 5.50pm. At 6.10 we joined the rest of our party at the table to wait for our meals.. we waited, and waited ... we were told the app takes 20-30 minutes so food shouldn't be too much longer. Shortly after this one part of our order came out (the 2nd people to order from our party) we were told the others wouldn't be too far behind. 6.20, 6.30 came and went. After asking several members of staff how much longer the rest of the food would be we were continually told "a few more minutes". We asked for just the child's meal as a priority as my 2 year old was wanting to eat with the other children! We were told there was a delay because we moved tables - even though the other half to our party had eaten their food by this time, and they too ordered for the first table. The same situation. Upon asking yet again (and you could tell staff were getting as irritated as we were, with no answers!) We were told our order would be next.. yet again "a few minutes". Previous to this we asked if we could cancel the adult meals and just have the child's as we had a boat to catch, needing to leave at 7pm. We were told this wasn't possible because the meals would be "a few more minutes" .. a few meaning 20 or more!? Eventually the child's meal came out, and then after another 8 minutes out came the 2 adult meals .. all in all waiting an hour for 2 burger meals!? When the staff bought the meals over, neither of them uttered a word and just placed *quite heavily * the plates down. Not even an apology, or a "can we get you any sauces". Just put the plates down and walked away. Really disappointed in what could have been a really nice end to our holiday. The food was okay, in all but unfortunately when staff can't give you any answers and appear to consistently lie to you, it kind of ruins the experience. We won't be returning or recommending, customer service is key and there was no compassion or understanding (apart from the lady who said it was her first shift and apologised having to get someone else.) We usually enjoy Greene King pubs, but will very much avoid this...

Went for meal with my nephew & his wife last night, oh dear where do I start. After ordering our meal at the bar from a somewhat sticky menu I went to get cutlery from stand & had job to find clean forks, several had food stuck between the tines or stuck on prongs. Once sat down we noticed how decidedly grubby the paintwork was by our table (no 11) & I mean dirty, as in not washed in who knows how long. The wooden fascia along the bar was the same. I had ordered a medium/well done steak, my steak was more rare to medium so I asked for it to be cooked longer. Ok when it came back it was no longer bleeding everywhere, so I thought all good, but gristle & fat meant cutting even with steak knife hard to impossible, after trying several different areas I gave up getting having two very small edible pieces cut, I wrapped the steak in 6 napkins & took it home for the foxes. Very disappointed with the quality of the steak, did I complain at the time? no apart from sending steak back first time,, we had already queried a drink of Zero Coke ordered specifically as nephews wife is a diabetic (cannot have sugar) given our experience we will not be back, I felt so bad for my nephew who had paid for the meal that I gave him the money for my steak as I didn't want to see him out of pocket paying money for the inedible steak. With the price of the steak & the money I gave my nephew the foxes dinner last night cost an eye...

We have been here several times and never had a problem however today was one of our worst experiences anywhere. We arrived and sat down to make our decision on what to eat. I then went to the bar to order where there was one member of staff attempting to cover the entire bar. To her credit she was serving quickly and despite there being several people in front we ordered quite soon. The main came out relatively soon and was nice as always, then came the problem. When the server cleared the table we mentioned the desserts we had ordered and assumed they'd soon be on there way. Our 3 year old was becoming boistrous as he wanted his dessert. We noticed another table who had finished their main after us was served desserts so the next server we saw we again queried where ours were, to which we were told they were on the way. After waiting patiently again another 20 minutes passed and enough was enough so we packed up and left the table. On the way out we told who I assume was the manager to cancel the desserts for our table. He said he'd look into it and we said it was too late. There was no apology and no appearance of concern. The place wasn't that busy with at most 50% capacity and bearing in mind it was a Saturday lunchtime the service was poor. In all we spent about 2.5 hours there most of which was waiting for imaginary dessert. This experience has seriously tarnished our opinion of this...