Browns

We booked Brown’s Butlers Wharf for a special birthday celebration for 15 people. They advertise that they can cope with large parties. They cannot. The service was incredibly slow at every stage of the meal. The starters turned up about 40 minutes after the food order was taken and although we sat down at eight o’clock the main meals eventually arrived at around ten o’clock. The meals did not arrive together and some of the sides were cold before some the mains came to join them. When the food did arrive it was very poor quality with the pasta being inedible and the filo tart being tepid at best. The most complimentary thing said about any of the food was I enjoyed the bits that weren’t burnt. We complained and were offered a free drink which in no way made up for the disastrous service and food.

We went to the Browns in Islington. Very disappointing. The food was absolutely fine - nothing special but we got what we paid for. The service, on the other hand, was exceptionally poor in my opinion.

We booked a table for 10 at 2pm. The litany of mistakes was remarkable (all times are estimates, but the 2.5 hours to get from sitting down to paying and leaving after two courses is accurate): guests who turned up were told that there was no table (despite the fact that half of us were already sat at it); it took the staff 10 minutes to offer us a drink; the drinks took 20 minutes to arrive, and only half the order turned up (the other drinks, after two polite reminders, arrived 45 minutes after we'd sat down); we were eventually invited to order 45 minutes after sitting around, half of us with no drinks; the starters started arriving at 3pm, but several wrong dishes turned up - apparently due to the fact that the waitress couldn't remember which table had ordered what; everyone's meals slowly limped out of the kitchen over a 10 minute period, by which time those of us who'd had our starters first had already finished; none of the waiting staff inquired as to whether our food was ok; 10 minutes after we'd all finished our starters (and exhausted our drinks), our waitress attempted to clear away our plates while delivering the first of the mains; like our starters, these limped out of the kitchen over a 10 minute period; simple requests - for instance for ketchup, mayonnaise, and salt and vinegar for people's chips - arrived late and wrong (what use there is in remembering that the table had asked for vinegar and delivering it after everyone had already finished their chips I don't know); we got bored waiting for a second bottle of wine to be delivered to our table (it stood on the bar counter for 5 minutes so we just walked over and picked it up); our main courses were delivered to the table without cutlery, which we had to ask twice to receive; it was 4.30pm by the time we'd finished our mains.

Throughout this process, several staff were apparently at the bar lounging around and one waitress seemed so unbusy that she cleaned the tables in her section (adjacent to ours) - although we noted that while she was happily spraying cleaning fluid on the tables, we didn't see her move the (uncovered) sugar bowls out of her line of fire.

Browns is a decent chain - but I feel they need to get a grip on this particular outlet.

We had no shame striking the entire 12.5% 'optional' service charge (which they'd automatically put on the bill, alongside another 'tip' line in case we wanted to tip more than 12.5%) from the bill. We felt there was no point paying for service when it was unsatisfactory.