Joan's review of Great Queen Street

The food was extremely uneven. The starters were a mix of quite good and very very average (the pomegranite and fennel salad). One of us had steak which was inedible and was taken back and off the bill. The mince pie was fine. Deserts had nice concepts that were, in the case of the Queen of Puddings, badly executed. It had been made in advance and lacked the crisp meringue finish it should have had.

What really disappointed, though, was the staff and the way we were handled. When we arrived no-one told us, nor did they when we booked, that the table was needed back in two hours. Certainly the pace of our service did not suggest urgency. The first person we dealt with was quite remote and hard to interact with. The waiter was extremely knowledgeable but what was weird was that the restaurant was unable to offer any flexibility. We asked for some additional chips or some mash on the side, and were told chips were only served with the steak and mash was not available. I asked for ketchup, because the chips were as dry as dust on the inside, I was told “we don't do ketchup”. When the waiter cleared, he noted we hadn't eaten the chips and suggested the restaurant was right in not allowing us to order a separate portion with our pie, instead of asking why we didn't eat more than a few of them (particularly as one of us had a main course that had been returned to the kitchen because it was inedible).

We were then told they wanted the table back while we were waiting for desert. When we went downstairs I asked to see the manager. He first claimed we had been told of the need to have the table at 930 when we booked, which was not the case. Had we been aware of a deadline we would have asked for our food to come more quickly. He then said we should have protested when we were asked to move (we were trying to be polite and my son works in the industry, understood the waiter was not happy about being asked to move us along). The bright spot of the evening was the bartender downstairs, a really charming and genial guy who did much to rescue the experience.