Coat and Badge, The

C. King (12 March 2007)

Four of us went for drinks and lunch at The Coat and Badge in Putney on Sun 11 Mar. We were looking for somewhere with an outside seating area as it was a beautiful day, and luckily for us, we found a table outside within 5 min of arriving.

We ordered lunch from the waitress who was clearly not in a happy mood. Our order consisted of a fish pie, a burger with brie, a chicken supreme and I ordered the chorizo and avocado salad with confit tomatoes and haloumi cheese.

The food arrived about an hour and 15 min later, brought to us by a different but equally surly waitress. The burger with brie went down well although the chips were stone cold. The chicken supreme was fine although a rather small portion. The fish pie was also described as “fine”, although wasn’t very flavourful and another small portion. The chorizo in my salad was burnt. Not just a little blackened – burnt. The avocado was also burnt, not sure why you’d want to cook it in the first place, never mind burn it. There was one small slice of haloumi cheese in the whole salad and there were no tomatoes, of any kind, at all.

The other finished their meals while I left mine three quarters untouched. Not once did anyone come to ask if everything was ok. (And there’s no way I’ll ever send food back and expect to get it back with out someone having spat in it or worse.) About 20 min later, the waitress came to our table and whipped away all four plates without asking if there was a problem with my nearly full plate.

As we were leaving, I went up to the bar and asked for the manager, who was serving drinks and not in any mood for apologies.

I started to explain the complaint about the salad and before I’d even finished my sentence, he turned around, opened the till and placed the full cost of my meal in my hand. He didn’t ask what the problem was, establish who I was (I could have just walked off the street for all he knew) apologise or try at all to remedy the situation, other than just give me my money back – no questions asked. Clearly this was not the first time this has happened.

I then thanked him but said that I’d still like to pay the rest of the bill for the table! He then gets all stroppy, says accusingly, “Oh, so you haven’t paid yet? I’ll just take that back then!” and takes the money out of my hand!

I paid for the other three meals, minus mine, and we all left. And no, we won’t be going back there to eat again, and I wouldn’t advise anyone else to either.