The Grove Lock, Grove

After a recent two week long cruise along the Grand Union Canal, I was extremely disappointed after visiting The Grove Lock.

I visited this pub before a number of years ago and was delighted to hear to that it had been refurbished recently and was under new manage as during my last visit the experience of going to the pub was very poor. The d�cor of the place was very modern and nice and I thought the afternoon would be a pleasant one.

However, my excitement was short lived upon entering the pub and the service that was provided to me at the bar. The young man that served me seemed as though he did not want to be there, and wanted to get me out of his face as quickly as possible as he seemed to be preoccupied with his mobile phone. Upon asking for a top up on my drink (as the head on it had gone down) I was met with an argument and the lad started to get very angry with me. I decided to let it go and went to sit down with my family.

We decided that we would like to have lunch at the location and picked out a selection of meals from the simple but good menu at the pub. This was yet to be another disappointment though, when I found that three of the four meals we wanted were out of stock and had to choose things that we did not particularly want. The price came to a very high amount, but never the less, I believed we would get some good quality food, so went and joined my family again.

After nearly one hour of waiting, the food still hadn't come and my children were starting to get very impatient. I was very bemused by this and wondered how it could take so long, seen as there were only around ten people in the entire pub I went to find out what was going, only t be confronted yet again by the boy that had served me first time. I asked him how long the wait on food was and he yet again started to get angry with me, and tried to convince me that we hadn't ordered anything. After showing him the receipt for our food, he went to the kitchen only to find that our order had been lost.

The food finally arrived nearly an hour and fifteen minutes later, and to my belief we did not get what we had paid for. The portions of food were very very small and my son said he was still hungry after the meal. The presentation of the food was also poor and it didn't seem very good quality food what so ever!

The final straw for me at this pub came, when after just finishing our meals, another staff member asked us to move tables as the one we were sitting had been reserved for later that evening. I decided that at that point it was perhaps time to move on.

I have been the manager of many different pubs over the last twenty years, and have turned many around from complete ruin to outstanding successes. This is possibly the worst pub I have been in, and needs some serious changes made to it if it is going to be a success in the future (mainly looking at how staff treat customers). It definately has a lot of potential.

This is not because this pub is part of a chain, as the other two Fullers pubs we visited on our trip (The Paper Mill in Apsley and The Boat in Berkhamsted) were both fantastic locations and I will more than willingly go back to them. However, until The Grove Lock is looked at by Fullers stringently, I will not be returning and would advise against other people from doing so.

30 Jul 2010 22:38