Anchor & Hope

Stuart T. (Male)

I'd heard about this place a while back so was looking forward to finally checking it out on a Friday evening. But unfortunately none of the great things I heard turned out to be true, and to call this one of London's top Gastropubs is an absolute joke.

We were seated at a table that featured a tabletop that was not properly attached to the base, causing it to wobble about 6 inches up and down on each side – I politely told one of the (uniformly surly) waiters about it and he said “that's the way we like them” then ran off. He then came back some time later (after one of us had a go at fixing it) and wiped the table with a very wet cloth leaving the one end of the table he wiped soaking before running off again.

We ordered some wine which came with tiny tumblers instead of wine glasses. This would have been fine had they bothered to wash them up – the inside of mine was covered with what I hope was chocolate.

Another waiter gave us the menus which promisingly featured some different dishes to those normally found in a pub. A few sounded good, but most of them had to be ordered by 4 or more people. I paid £16 for a rabbit dish which had half the amount of meat described by the waiter and no vegetables – which they didn't bother pointing out at the time of ordering. It was pretty tough and strangely smelt of frankfurters.

One of us had a pudding, which was an insipid looking chocolate mousse of varying consistencies in one of the small tumblers. The one good thing about it was that it confirmed that my dirty glass had indeed been tainted by chocolate.

All in all really poor and so overhyped. I'd leave and go somewhere else if for some reason I found myself drinking in there again and in need of some food.