Great food but pity about the service - The Albion

Nothing beats a Saturday night out in a London pub when Summer has finally arrived and the sun sets late.  Unfortunately, given the UK’s current approach to the season, we’ve had to settle for moments of joy between dodging rain, puddles and (yes, I am not kidding) hail.

However, we still wandered off to The Albion in Islington on a not so balmy Summers evening for dinner.    As a pub goes, it is very Islington – trendy but traditional with cosy nooks and a lovely beer garden.   

We booked a table for eight and apparently this means you get the paired down menu which is a little sparse if you don’t like fish and want something more evolved than a burger or sausages and mash.  However, when we asked, they did reveal that as we were on the cusp, they would serve us from the main board – glory be.

And what a menu that is – it focused on meat and I shared a 1kg of rump with my mates boyfriend.  She is vegetarian so he is always keen to have me along for dinner – obv. for my sparkling personality and sense of humour.  With our rump, we were allowed to choose two sides and got red cabbage and twice cooked chips which were excellent. 

They carefully source all their meat so the rump really was excellent and cooked to perfection.  They also do other meat sharing platters and given 72hrs notice can produce a roast suckling pig for £350 for groups of 10-15 people. 

Other members of the party had fish and chips which looked good, the steak which was pricy but obviously nice and I believe I saw a burger at the end of the table.  All in all the food was excellent and the atmosphere good.

The one complaint I do have is about the service but not the serving staff.  Apparently, the waitress hands in the chit with the order to the bar and then the bar person is expected to deliver the drinks.  We were kept waiting 15 minutes for our first drink as unsurprisingly the bar was manic on a bank holiday Saturday. How annoying!  I would imagine that it also cost them money as every time we wanted drinks we had to catch someone’s eye and they had perfected the art of avoidance.

So while the food is excellent, The Albion does rather let itself down when it comes to service.

Come on raise the standard pls

Lx

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