The Lion West Hampstead

The Lion West Hampstead is a dreadful place. Used to be a great social gathering point with a pleasant garden now left to delapidate. Plastic chairs collapsed on two of our company. Garden looks ripe for a major accident on the unguarded stairs- not clever whan they seem to want to portray themselves as child friendly. Service appalling. Food inedible. Staff rude. Only interested in the money by the looks of things. Wasn't impressed by thestaff member showing his pretty little dog off on the counter- surely against h@S We used to be spoiled for choice for pubs. Alas no more. Avoid

When you walk into The Lion, you get a very nice surprise. It's bright, spacious and modern, just hasn't lost that cosy pub feel. For me it looked perfect and I'm a big fan of big leather sofas rather than small hard backed chairs that you find in a lot of pubs, and this place was full of them. Out back is a nice sized beer garden where people can smoke. So far, so good.

The service wasn't too bad, when we ordered our drinks, so we thought we'd get some food too. There were 5 of us in total and we all ordered burgers except one who ordered pasta. 15 minutes later the waitress came back and reconfirmed the pasta order. 5 minutes later she was back again to say they no longer did that dish. My friend selected a new meal and off the waitress went.

We waited around an hour in total for our meal to arrive. Now the place wasn't packed, far from it! There were only maybe 3 or 4 tables when we ordered so what was with the wait?

The food its self was sub standard and cold. My friend had chosen a jacket potato and it was hard all the way through. How hard is it to cook a spud?!

We weren't impressed at all but a few weeks later, on a Friday afternoon my work colleges were keen to give it a try. I went with them hoping for a better experience. We were the ONLY table there, and there were maybe 10 of us. Half of us never got our meal as an hour later we were still waiting and had to go back to work. When we complained we were told off for not asking how long the food would take before we ordered!

I will not be going back.