Horse And Groom

Called in for a drink and a break, half way on our walk from arriving at Euston station, on route to the Hard Rock hotel. At 8-30 on a Saturday evening, the place was empty, but this may have been due to Covid, but it is a very nice and typical London Pub. Good selection of drinks, only comment is the signage for the toilets, the sign for the ladies points to the left but is over the door to the Gents, an embarrassing happening occurred to my daughter, the poor girl had never seen a urinal before, she was embarrassed, we laughed our heads off.

Visited this pub a few times The manager is just a jobsworth Previously this bloke in his overblown sick inducing shirts he wears was like a little bully if you used your mobile phone in front of him. He enjoyed shouting that the rules state you cannot use hand devices. While letting the BBC toffs that drink in there swear get abusive and take over the entrance door area so you can't get in or out..so I stopped drinking in there also when Sam Smith hiked the prices up during the covid. While the manager and the staff had a nice long 3 month break at our expense.

I came to the Horse and Groom for a quiet drink on a Wednesday evening in September. Overall the staff were friendly, the interior was nice and drinks were reasonably priced. Unfortunately due to low numbers of customers (and potentially Covid protocols) large areas of the pub were closed off and the pub was closing early. Also, please note this is Sam Smiths pub and thus only sells the beer from that brewery.

Absolutely disgusted!!! I cannot believe what I witnessed last night. I went into this pub for a quiet drink and have never met a more obnoxious rude, vile landlord in my entire life who after making me feel uncomfortable for merely ordering a drink. He then went on to verbally abuse a young lady in front of the whole pub for no apparent reason. All I can say is he is very lucky there were no real men in the pub to witness this verbal attack. Incredible. If this pub is brewery owned then they to sort this immediately. This type of behaviour is NOT OK.

I can honestly say that I have never had a worst pub experience in London. Ever. I had been many times to the Horse Groom (this was actually the first pub I went when I visited London for the first time many years ago and when it looked completely different) for a quick pint and a cup of chocolate for my son who goes to school around the corner. The service was always cordial and although the beer is very bad, as I reckon you should expect for a pint of Sam Smith, it was reasonably priced. Then, one fateful day, I made the mistake of staying for dinner. And then I met the publican. It is an understatement of sorts to say that there is something seriously wrong with this chap. I thought it was mildly amusing when, clad in a flower stamped shirt, was loudly parading around the pub showing the cheap and tired décor to some friends as if he were giving a private tour of the National Gallery. Alas, the mirth was swiftly taken away from me. He first came to complain, rudely enough, that my son’s backpack was taking too much space. I apologized and moved it away and he went back behind the bar. I went up there to apologize again and to order some food but this didn’t improve his sour demeanour and he made another rude comment. I know that trying to appease a bully in general leads nowhere, but I thought that this may satisfy his pseudo-alpha personality. That was a mistake, obviously. It was also a mistake not to point out that he was cheating me with the bill, once the food and more beer were ordered, but I was deadbent on enjoying my meal with my two sons and I tried to put the whole incident behind, including the overcharge. The food came; it was, I guess not surprisingly, of very poor quality. Overcooked hamburgers, dry buns, soggy fries, the works. Then the second mistake of the evening was made: my older son, who is 8 years old, got thirsty. I know how people can get testy around kids in pubs, so I have always trained him to be very respectful to avoid annoying someone. Because he is very shy, he never had any problems in the hundredths of pubs that he has been over the years. On the contrary, customers and employees are constantly commending him for how well behaved he is. So, I thought it was safe to tell him to ask for a glass of water himself since I was eating and feeding my other son. A few seconds later, the publican came, screaming at the top of his lungs and foaming through his mouth about children in leash and licenses (yes, that portmanteau of an excuse) and whatnot. Although, the pub was quite noisy by then, everybody about us stopped talking and turned around to look at this drill sergeant of a pub owner reading me the riot act for allowing a child to order a glass of water. I calmly tried to explained how disproportionate this was, how my son goes to pubs at least once a week and he never had any problem ordering a glass of water, and that there was no way I could get this glass of water myself without either leaving the kids alone or bringing them to the bar anyway. But there was no way that he could be calmed down. My 3 years old is a tough cookie, but he was getting quite scared so I though that it would change the manager’s mind from that unfortunate glass of water, if I mentioned that my intention was not to create any trouble and that I hadn’t even pointed out that he had overcharged me with the bill. He got even angrier! So much so, that the lady that normally served us the quick pint and the cup of chocolate had to intervene to tell him that we had always been polite customers and that she will look into the bill situation. They both left, but since, in order to do that, she had to audit the cash register, and the whole thing was taking her almost 10 minutes, I got up again and went to the bar to say never mind, it is just a few pounds, I am sorry for the water incident and that it wasn’t worth getting so angry about it. But there was no way of calming him down and he went back to screaming that he was going to get to the bottom of the bill thing because he couldn’t have made a mistake and that “you people” (I guess he meant foreigners, but who knows) don’t understand anything about laws (the irony of him telling me this when someone was auditing his cash register because he had overcharged a client went over his head) and incoherent things of that sort. I went back to my seat to meekly wait for the verdict on the bill that was finally brought by the lady who, unsurprisingly, informed me that they had overcharged me by about 5 pounds and that since they couldn’t return the money for whatever silly reason, they were going to pay me in pints! The publican never came to apologize himself for the mistake. The whole thing was so surreal, that it would have been more amusing if he hadn’t scared my sons so much with his temper tantrums. So, unless you are a psychiatric specializing in anger management, I would strongly advise you to have your pints and dinner somewhere else, especially given the poor quality of both these things at the Horse Groom. There are much better pubs in the neighborhood (The Green Man, with much better beer; The Yorkshire Grey, also cheap but with better food; The Crown Scepter; and hopefully re-opening soon, the King’s Arms, among others) that not only have either better beer, food or both. But more importantly are not managed by an out of control chap that will scream at you and your children for a glass of water.