Drift Reality > London, England > The Goose, Bloomsbury

Editor's Note: In general, the restaurant and club reviews that I post to Drift Reality are my own work. In this case, a close friend of mine who accompanied me to The Goose pub in Bloomsbury did such a phenomenal job encapsulating our experience that I figured it might be better to just post her review.

To whom it may concern,

I would like to advise you of, what I believe is the most appalling customer service and rudeness that I have encountered at a London pub.

Yesterday evening, three friends and my husband and myself were meeting at The Goose for dinner and drinks. We all live in Bloomsbury, and often to go The Goose for a drink or lunch during the week and dinner on Sunday nights. As we frequent the venue quite regularly, I was very surprised with our encounter there last night.

We met at 7pm for dinner, and went to the upstairs bar. The sign on the outside door of the pub indicated that food was being served until 10:00pm. At about 7:20pm we went to the bar to order dinner. One member of our party's order for food was put through (an ultimate burger), and then the bartender then looked at my husband for his order. Out of courtesy, he offered for the other lady in our party to be served first. She put through an order (one bangers and mash, one ultimate burger and chicken wings). My husband then went to order our meals immediately after (we were all standing at the bar together) and was told by the lady at the bar that the kitchen was closed as they ran out of food. This meant that three members of our party were going to get food, however the other two were not able to order. The lady at the bar said that there was nothing she could do about it.

I then went to the downstairs bar to inquire. I was told that unfortunately the kitchen was closed as they had run out of stock. I said that half of our party had ordered, and two people were left without food. They just said they could do nothing about it. Another lady then came up and said it had been a really busy week, and they were low on stock - they only had ingredients for 3 meals on the menu left. I said, that's fine - can you let me know what the 3 meals are so that I might choose to order them. I was then told no, because it was 'just easier' if the kitchen closed down. I then asked whether it would be possible, as 3 of our party have ordered, for us to go out and buy some food and bring it in to eat with our friends. I was told I could not do this.

I found it quite strange that there were enough ingredients for 2 ultimate burgers, but not 4 and also, if they had completely run out of chips (they kept telling me that they had run out of chips and baguettes), why were there chips with the burgers?

I found it appalling that no-one was even willing to compromise or help out. The kitchen clearly had food, as they had told me that there was food left, but instead of allowing 2 more orders through (and we would have just ordered whatever was left) everyone just said 'too bad', the kitchen decided to close and there is nothing we can do about it.

In any case, the food arrived and the burgers were missing some of the ingredients stated on the menu. This might not have been an issue if we were told at the time of ordering that some ingredients had run out, but we weren't. At this stage, with half of our party not having food and then the orders not being what we expected, we asked to see the manager. The person who came to speak to us, was the rudest person I have ever encountered in customer service. He blatantly just stood there and said that he had to close the kitchen and what did we want him to do about it? I am sorry, but it should really be for a bar manager to come to us and offer us options of what could be done - not stand there and just stubbornly reply there was nothing he could do about it and what did we want? We eventually managed to get a refund from the manager, but this was after a long discussion with no other options offered by him, and was definitely our least preferred option - we would have rathered simply 2 meals so that we could all eat together, which was why we went out to dinner in the first place.

I would appreciate a reply to this comment in relation to your current policies on customer service and whether you believe that the situation that happened to our party was acceptable.

Yours sincerely

Rochelle Carey