Jeremy Mason

Review of Ivy Oxford

A huge disappointment, food was okay, management i...

A huge disappointment, food was okay, management is horrific, with minimal recompense.

My friend and I went Monday 24th August for lunch. As the eat out deal is on, the place was full, in my opinion, dangerously so. As others have said, the tables have no social distancing or screening, no staff on the floor wear masks, but tellingly when I was returning from the toilets I saw all staff in the kitchen, including waiters whisky they were in there, were wearing them.
The worst kind of performative covid safety and this place in a nutshell. Trading on image and brand with barely a foam of actual substance.
The staff whilst friendly were inattentive and ill managed. We were sat between a pillar and a till/waiter station yet had to wait over and over for various parts of out meal.

We ordered a beer, glass of wine and water for the table. Alcohol arrives normally, water does not. We can almost touch the fridge with the bottles in but the waiter did not bring one or glasses until the THIRD time of asking. Then it was maybe 20mins until we were asked to order food. The water once empty was not replaced, a service I have enjoyed at restaurants at half the price.

We chose the duck salad and salmon to start, both had the prawn and monkfish curry with "fragrant" rice and a side of sugar snap and garden peas.




After our desserts were cleared, we waited for the drinks. The waiter had made a point to ask if we wanted the drinks after dessert, and we agreed.

We got lost in conversation before realising it had been more than a quarter hour with no drinks in sight. Bear in mind that staff were constantly passing, going to the till and not seeing us at a bare table. We had to stop another waiter saying we hadn't got our drinks, his response was "what do you want?", missing the point that we had already ordered, so we again said an earl grey and a shakerato.

When it finally came, the teacup had baked on dirt inside the cup, I had to scrape it off with my fingernail, at this level the staff should be checking the cleanliness of all tableware before bringing it out. It makes me question whether the other dishes with food covering them had similar contamination.

The tea was brought out on its own without the coffee. Again at this level, and with only two drinks, these should be brought out together. We waited for it, and waited, and waited. Once I had finished my tea, we asked for the bill at which point the waiter piped up with "oh you wanted a shakerato, sorry do you want it now?" which having finished the tea (a full hot pot, maybe another 10mins), we declined and asked for the bill.

We were now laughing to each other about how woefully inadequate the service was. Of course it took perhaps another 10mins to get a bill from the till we could see so closely, we could read the screen. Then it was presented to us with (thankfully) the not delivered shakerato refunded but also the tea (dirty cup).



We then said we were very disappointed and went into detail as to why. His response was to contort his face into various childish "I'm sooweee" contortions and offer no reason for the failures.

Don't waste your time here. Quod, Gee's, Brasserie Blanc are all better run establishments of a similar calibre.