The Anglers, Teddington

Went there yesterday, Sunday 12 September 2010, with idea of having a nice meal with wife. Now we have been here quite a few times and have loved it, especially when the weather is nice. The queues at the bar can be bit off putting sometimes, but you can always nip next door when its like that. They did have a beer and pimm's tent early in the summer to alleviate this problem, but strangely have stopped this. Staff are a bit young but pleasant enough.

Oh dear! My wife ordered meal at the bar. I quite fancied a roast, but on seeing the queue at the hog roast counter decided against it, instead ordering a guinness and steak pie. Unfortunately, unbeknown to us, some bright spark had decided that steak pie is standard barbecue food and thus, instead of being brought to your table, you had to fetch it yourself from the hog counter. By this stage the queue to that counter was snaking half way round the garden resembling a world record attempt for the gonga, with two GCSE types serving at a rate of one person every 3 minutes. Forty minutes later, my wife had already eaten, I was still in the queue and had lost the will to live, never mind my appetite.

I know they were busy, but they have been busier before. If you have not got the staff to cope then don't take the orders. In other places if one counter is too busy then the manager spots it, and diverts extra staff to that area. "Its simples" as that meerkat would say and I bet you for one thing that I am not the only person in that queue who will think again about coming back to the Anglers.

13 Sep 2010 11:05