The Grove

This place is great, lovley warm atmosphere, graet food and good service.

What more do you want on a Sunday Afternoon.
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Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 8 | Atmosphere 10 | Value for money 7
Monday, November 20, 2006

I met up with a group of 6 mates to have a couple of drinks and late lunch one sunday in april. We picked the Grove as it's food looked a bit above the pub standard judging by the price and it looked smart inside. When we arrived there we were impressed by the surroundings, lovely decor and smart furniture. There was a nice mix of people including one family complete with trendy buggy (this is in balham remember) although far away enough from the main high street to not be rammed full of the usual nappy valley balhamites.

There's a good selection of beers on tap and they're willing to make you up champagne cocktails if you ask.

We were then shown to a large circular table and it was there that the service began to let the whole experience down. The champgne we ordered was opened away from the table and was poured very badly by an incomptent waitress who hadn't a clue of even the basics of waiting on tables.

The food arrived and for the most part was ghastly. For a pub roast over the standard tenner, you expect something a bit tasty. But the meat was dry, tasteless and had clearly been sitting there a while after being sliced, Roast poatatoes- everyone'\s favourite, were soggy and white with no flavour. the whole meal was then swamped by a soup-like gravy which left the food desperately swimming around the large plates.

We held out hope for the desserts with some of the guys still hungry! But although large portions the fruit crumble was an inadequate thin layer of oats and sugar over a bizarre mixture including banana, when we all wanted a proper chunky pub crumble. It's only redeeming feature was the yummy creme anglais.

All in all, good pub for drinks. shame about the food with slightly cheeky prices for the quality you get. But they badly need to up the level of service if they want people to return to eat!
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Overall rating
Food 3 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 6 | Value for money 4
Monday, May 15, 2006

I've been to this pub a number of times and when they get it right the service and food is fantastic. However, pick a bad day and it can be a particularly unpleasant experience, as one of my friends discovered. We arrived at 1.30pm on a Saturday lunchtime and confirmed at the bar that food was still being served. With drinks purchased we sat down to look at the menu and 5 minutes later went back to the bar to order, to be told that there would be a 30 minute wait before it could be placed in the kitchen. We were told that this was because there had been a rush on but the place wasn't even half full. Had we been told this when we ordered our drinks we would have left and gone elsewhere, but with drinks in hand we felt we had been almost tricked into having to put up with the delay. When starters arrived an hour and twenty minutes later, the salt and pepper squid ordered came as calamari. The manageress seemed unconcerned when my dining companion pointed out the discrepency. Mains arrived 45 minutes later, and the hand cut chips looked as if they'd been bought in from the McDonalds on the High Road. The manageress reacted to my friend's query about the chips by putting her face right up to my friend's and saying, in a very aggressive and confrontational tone, 'well if they're not good enough madame, then you won't have to pay for them'. We were both very shocked at this behaviour. We won't be going back, which is a shame, because when the kitchen works the food is good.

ps. on another weekend lunchtime prior to this I went with a group of friends to be told at 2.00pm that the kitchen had run out of food completely. Luckily Abbeville Road is within walking distance if you fancy taking the chance.
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Andrew, Balham
Overall rating
Food 6 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 7 | Value for money 6
Friday, May 12, 2006

The label Gastro implies that The Grove has pretensions it can’t quite fulfil. The first time I tried to eat there they had run out food. This was at 2pm and they purportedly serve food until 10pm. The second time, we managed to order food, however we were warned there was a 30 minute delay due to a large order of snacks that had just been received. We waited for more than 50 minutes. Some customers were told that they had stopped serving food for at least an hour, however not until they had ordered drinks and settled down with the menu. Not particularly good management. When the food did arrive it was hardly inspiring. The salt and pepper squid was just calamari and greasy and tough at that. I couldn’t taste the difference between roasted garlic and lime mayonnaise and mayonnaise. My friends chorizo was good, however they cooked the olives in the sauce without pitting them. The fish choice was fishcakes or fish and chips. Not very imaginative however the fishcakes were fine. My friend very much enjoyed his corn fed chicken. The scariest part of the meal (not a word I usually use when visiting restaurants) was when I asked the manager whether the McD like stringy chips were hand cut (only because my friend had been raving about them and we had ordered them specially). The Manager actually faced off to me in a very confrontational way until I backed down and apologised to her. I’ve never felt threatened in a restaurant before – a new experience I don’t wish to repeat. We didn't hang around for pudding.
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Francesca
Overall rating
Food 6 | Service 4 | Atmosphere 7 | Value for money 5
Sunday, May 07, 2006