Not the whole hog...

The Pig’s Ear is tucked away in lovely ‘old Chelsea’ and offers a discreet and unassuming bolthole for residents, locals and those in the know. Having dined there once previously before in the very pretty upstairs room I was looking forward to trying their Sunday lunch offering.

Sadly last Sunday did not compare and it appeared to us that they had let things slide somewhat since our last visit. We could have picked a bad day, or there were some staffing issues but despondently we came away very disappointed. Having arrived and struggled through much debate over our booking we finally were seated in the alarmingly empty room downstairs and starting salivating over the menu.

Unfortunately it was here that things started to go wrong, we waited for 10 minutes with no offer of a drink, so asked our waitress. She then forgot and so we had to ask again by which point we had been sitting there for 15-20 minutes. She then came and grumpily asked to take our order, but we still had not received any drinks! The food itself was good, we shared 6 oysters to start and were impressed by the quality of them, however the service was so poor that this tainted the dining experience.

We asked if we could try an Italian wine before we ordered it, the waitress looked at us blankly and said “let me check”. I then asked if I could have my fish taken off the bone, the answer to this was no after another “let me check”. My fish came five minutes before my guest’s main course and no-one had cleared the empty glasses and dirty napkins off our table from the first course. We had to ask for everything twice and despite the restaurant being practically empty we felt totally ignored. 

There were no signs of management present and our waitress had evidently had zero to little training, a fault of the managers not hers. The final sting came when the bill amounted to £90, one shared starter, two main courses and two drinks each- I appreciate in Chelsea you can pay through the nose but the least you expect for that is experienced, decent service. We won’t be rushing back in a hurry.