the londoner

came back after not being here for over a year. appetizer came out at sane time as food which, in my book, is unacceptable. the food was extremely bland.


-----14 aug, 2011-----

the service at this place.... i was very disappointed with thelondonerthis afternoon. my friend and i decided go here for our sunday pint instead of our usual chimes east. we walked into the bar and it wasn't too crowded. we sat at a bar table. neither one of the bartenders acknowledged us and the servers never came to clean our dirty table let alone take our order. we left after waiting 15 minutes. the service was totally unacceptable and is a tell tale sign of a doomed restaurant. thelondonerneeds to get its act together if it is going to survive a competitive restaurant market.

wow! thelondonerin rockwall knocks it out of the park with stellar service and superior texas hospitality for a very special milestone (40th) birthday party celebration for our party of 25! the rock stars were manager on duty, dennis along with two absolutely amazing servers, gabe and morgan (aka captain morgan)! their attentive service and attention to every detail was phenomenal. truly good hearted people that far exceeded our customer experience! we highly recommend thelondonerin rockwall :)

i am alondonerso was quite excited to give this place a try and was looking forward to my steak and ale pie.

the atmosphere was good and i liked the phone booth and the union jack pool table. the drinks were also good and my husband enjoyed his guinness. sadly, that was where our satisfaction ended.

the pastry on my pie was soft and under-cooked and the meat was so full of pepper i couldn't eat it. i was told by the waitress that it was to cater for the locals. thankfully my husband has more of a heat tolerance than me so we switched and i had his fish and chips. it tasted ok but nothing special. the fish was a lot smaller than uk portions and it looked factory made rather than in-house. the chips were regular fries rather than the steak cut chips that usually accompany fish.

the waitress told me that the owner was british but none of the staff was.

my opinion is, if you are going to open a british restaurant, then the british food should be just that. if you are going to season everything to cater for the locals, that's fine, but give the place a different name.

ok i have a theory about restaurants that has yet to be proven wrong. it doesnt hold true to all but for the most part you can judge a kitchen by how it serves the simplest of fare. for example - if you can make a burger and fries pop, without going goram crazy, then the rest of your menu will be reasonably tasty as well. that being said thelondonerkitchen needs work. order the standard burger, cheddar cheese, fries and a coke - simple fare. the burger was good, the bun not so much - uncooked like they just threw it together. the lettuce, onion, pickles were good, cheap mayo. the fries were mediocre at best - frozen seasoned fries. bleh. the coke was ok and the people were nice. monday night so not a big crowd. there are some other things on the menu i would like to try. see if they do those better but so far it is shaping up to be not on my list of places to recommend.

surmising "the londoner" in .... surmising thelondonerin one word? that's easy: flavor.

you can taste everything. the subtle flavor of the fish. the beer in the beer batter. the potatoes in the chips (french fries). they add just enough spices and herbs to accent what you're eating, not hide it.

they don't load everything up with salt and grease to the point you've forget what you're eating. and, the toffee pudding is worth the drive no matter what part of town you live in.

our waitress, victoria, was polite, very we'll-mannered and prompt.

i recommend the londoner, highly.

avoid at all costs. the few times i have gone to thelondoneri was terribly disappointed. the food was either super super bland or was salty to the point of being inedible. the sodas were flat, the glasses are always dirty, and the waitstaff is slow and apathetic.

thelondoneris an english style pub located on sherwood forest blvd. in baton rouge, la. true to form they have a very nice and large bar area with darts & pool tables..styled nicely and also had comfy couches, large chairs and big tv’s throughout the place. as i said it is styled nicely true to  standards of a real english pub. beautiful inside and they play most all soccer game from around the world.   the food however is a different story. i have never been to england but the food here for the most part is bland and boring. we sampled the scotch eggs (hard boiled egg wrapped in pork then breaded and fried) they looked amazing, but were almost tasteless. the sauce that same along side for dipping also tasted like nothing. we also had the “tower of london burger” which we found to be an average, run of the mill burger, again under seasoned and just plain boring.   fish and chips     the fish and chips were the only thing we found to be tasty. although the portion siz

go somewhere else. the concept of this place is good, but unfortunately the execution is way, way off.

the price on the menu is less than the price they'll actually charge you. watch out. it's systematic, unethical, and they're unapologetic.

the beer often has a slightly soapy taste to it - sometimes it's a very soapy taste. this has been going on for a number of months, despite my group of friends complaining on several occasions. i don't know what they're messing up, but it really ruins a beer.

the selection is unreliable - for instance they were routinely out of smithwick's for months in a row.

all in all,londonerused to be good - it became our default bar - but it's now disappointing and sad. you'll be happier if you go somewhere else.

from a 'regular'. firstly, everyone, let's remember: this place is not necessarily styled on your typical restaurant. it is styled on a typical pub. as someone who spent twelve years in england and has thus frequented many a pub meal, i can tell you that pubs are more laid back. you would typically go to them for a lazy evening or weekend meal while you have drinks with friends or family. of course, you're still entitled to good service, but just bear this in mind. :)

my trips to thelondonerare usually fueled by a wish to hang out with friends, with drinks, food and a game of pool, and i've always had a relaxing time. the atmosphere is laid-back, casual and fun. food has always been good (apart from my very first visit, where i had a very unfortunate run-in with an admiral's pie that has since thankfully gone from the menu), hot and ample-portioned. though i don't drink, it seems and i've been told that the variety of beers and ale is pretty good.

in terms of authenticity, of course you can't beat a real british pub since it doesn't have age behind it, but they do really well and you can tell they're gathering their decor and settling in. the food gets fairly close (apart from the sticky toffee pudding - which is still good), and i encourage everyone to try the loaded cheese fries and shepherd's pie, and the salsa for the chips and salsa is fantastic. i've also had the smoked salmon, caper and cream cheese omelet which was pretty good. for the record yes, they do offer hot tea. :)

for those interested: pool has been around $6-$8 an hour and on occasion some of the cues and balls can be a little worse for wear, but granted, this isn't a pool hall - there are four tables upstairs along with two dart boards, a jukebox, fusball table and table shuffleboard. there are spots to sit outside and a balcony and additional bar upstairs (to bear in mind if you order food upstairs - the order has to be taken and has to come from downstairs!). brunch on sundays 10:30-3!

great food and atmosphere!. we thoroughly enjoyed our first visit to thelondonerand long to go back. we tried a couple of different rounds of the beer samplers. green mussel appetizer as well as cheese fries (all yummy!). the fish n chips were amazing! everything is fresh, the fish was beautifully flaky and crispy. the dill tartar sauce was so good i could eat it with everything. hubby got the steak and ale pie which was a big strong in flavor for me, but he enjoyed. i also tried the sheperd's pie which was also very tasty. for dessert we had the sticky toffee pudding and the fried bread pudding. all so good. great experience and anyone we've referred has said the same. cant wait to go back!

my fiance and i have been to thelondonertwice. the first time we went, i had called hours ahead to make a reservation. when we got there, the hostess claimed she had no record of it and continued to seat other parties while she tried to "figure out" what was going on with our table. we sat for 20 minutes or so until a server finally saw our plight and sat us in his section. i got the bangers and mash and my fiance got the burger. tasted decent, mostly because we were starving by the time we sat down. the second visit i called and made reservations again and this time they weren't mysteriously lost. we sat upstairs because we were told it would be quieter. however, they had the lsu game on with surround sound. it was like sitting in the middle of tiger stadium - not what we wanted. i ordered the shepherd's pie and was very disappointed. it was more like meat stew with four inches of cold, congealed mashed potatoes and cheese on top. waitress was slow and not very bright. don't think thelondonerhas much of a future in baton rouge. we will not be returning.

music too loud!. too noisy! addinglondonerto list of restaurants i will boycott because they are too noisy! why are so many places too noisy? whaaat?

pretty decent.. my boyfriend and i decided to go thelondonerto finally eat last weekend, we've had drinks there before. this may just be nit picky, but the music was too loud and the booth was huge, my boyfriend is fairly tall and he had to scoot up to sit comfortably.
our drinks took a while, but they had to change out a tap so no big deal. we got the chips and curry as an appetizer and i was not a fan. the chips had cinnamon dusted on them, which just threw me off. the curries were worse, the "hotter" one tasted like taco seasoning mixed with water.
i ordered the chicken and chips before we received the appetizer and then prayed it didn't have cinnamon, it didn't thankfully. the portion was huge, there were at least 4-5 chicken strips and they were delicious. my boyfriend got the steak and ale pie and he loved it. it came with white cheddar mashed potatoes and the steak was very tender.
our waiter was very nice and fairly attentive. i would definitely go there again.

cool atmosphere good food. i tell you what,br has got to be one of the best places if you like different places to eat.now british food how cool is that and thelondoneris great with a huge beer list and good wait staff it is a super place to hang out.

english pub? nah mate.. being an englishman in baton rouge i was obviously intrigued when a new place opens claiming to be an authentic english pub. i've seen many places in this country try to lay claim to this but none ever coming close due to a variety of factors that are difficult to reproduce.

my first impression upon entering the place is that it looks just like a bar on the inside. sure you can have wooden seating, and bar stools and the like but atmosphere is everything with a proper pub and this place just didn't capture it. a pub is supposed to be a social place where people can banter over a game of pool or darts and feel pretty intimate. however the inside of thelondonerto me was akin to brew-bachers just with higher tables.

the most disappointing part of the trip was definitely the food. what first struck me was the prices, $12 for fish and chips!!! are you joking? ignoring the fact that fish & chips isn't usually 'pub food', in most chippies in england a larger portion than this is around 3 pounds ($5). it shouldn't be this expensive! the same goes with other items on the menu too such as the bangers & mash (a traditionally cheap pub/home cooked meal that shouldn't cost over $10!)

we tried a few of the dishes including the chicken tikka masala, the fish & chips and the pork chops. firstly, the fish & chips didn't impress me at all. the batter was different to what i'm used to and tasted similar to how those gorton fillets are that you can buy in walmart (they obviously weren't these but the flavour and texture were very similar). the batter was pretty bland but as a whole they were cooked ok. the masala was pretty tasty. normally one of the mildest curries but they add a little more spice to it here which definitely improved the flavour, however for $12 i expected a larger portion. i only had a bite of the pork chops but they seemed well cooked and nicely seasoned.

overall, this place is far from an english pub. it is a restaurant that serves expensive versions of english meals that are alright, and a whole lot of american food too. they also have a decent beer selection at typical baton rouge prices.