The Grenadier, Belgravia

Dear Reader, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES VISIT THIS PLACE. THE STAFF AND LANDLORD ARE TRULY HORRIBLE PEOPLE WHO DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU, ONLY ABOUT YOUR WALLET.
NOW I'VE WARNED YOU I'LL EXPLAIN. . .AND IT IS A LONG MOAN SO APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE
I've lived in London all my life and been to all sorts of good and not so good places. I went to the Grenadier after reading a couple of reviews and thinking it looked pretty special.
It was but not in a good way. . .
My friend and I got in fine and asked if there were any tables available for dinner. The barman told us 'yes', so we bought some drinks - I actually saw my friend hand over �20 and get change which became an important point later - and we were then shown into an empty dining room and given menus. So far so good.
Then the weirdest thing happened: 5 minutes after we sat down the barman returned and apropos of nothing said he needed the table back by 9.30 PM. We checked our watches: it was 8.15.
My friend and I talked this through and because we'd not seen each other for ages and had planned to eat in a leisurely way over the course of a few hours, we decided that we'd finish our drinks and go somewhere else: somewhere we wouldn't have an egg timer in the back of our minds, counting down the seconds until we'd be asked to make way for other diners.
So we told the barman our plan but he told us to leave the dining area immediately. We asked him if we could finish our drinks first - after all the dining room was empty - but in an extremely hostile, rude way he refused, telling us told we couldn't and repeating the line that we had to leave immediately.
Because he was so rude we protested and asked to see the landlord who duly appeared.
We explained the situation - said what we had wanted to do and how we'd been made to feel pressurised and then how the barman had made us feel really, deeply unwelcome.
The landlord explained there was nothing he could do: that is was 'policy'. I asked him if he was the landlord or the manager and he confirmed the former. I said that as the landlord he could decide what 'policy' was - he could do what he wanted. He could make a decision on whether two people who had wanted to spent the whole evening drinking, eating and spending a lot of money in his pub should be made to feel completely unwelcome, rudely spoken to and pushed out of an empty dining room or not.
At this point the barman who had slipped away for a moment came back and presented us with a bill for the drinks we'd already bought. We told him we'd already paid and he called my (female) friend a 'lying bitch.'
We were stunned.
Then I explained I'd actually seen my friend pay in cash for the drinks beforehand and that that was no way to speak to anyone, let alone a paying customer.
In the end the landlord told us he'd had a problem with the barman before and would speak to him in the morning. Given how utterly pompous and unconcerned the landlord was for how we felt, we reckoned he probably congratulated his staff member on damage well done.
In the end the landlord told us to have the drinks (yes folks the ones we'd ALREADY PAID FOR!!) 'on the house', so clearly he didn't believe we'd paid for them either.
So in summary the landlord of this pub is a total fathead who has allowed Time and Money not customers' wellbeing to become the Masters of his establishment.
if there is ANY justice in this world, this vile man deserves to have his pub taken off him by someone who actually cares about his customers not just about the cash they carry.

11 Oct 2010 21:01