Me and the Trouble are right Barry when it comes to finding somewhere for a little Bo Peep away from our own gaff. So when Young’s ran their “One More Sleep” promotion again, we were proper Mum and Dad about it. A bottle for 2 nights in town? We could not Adam and Eve it.

That is, until we tried to check in early, when it turned out that “Fox & Anchor” is also cockney rhyming slang. I though the term was Merchant Banker (and I’ve met a few), but clearly in this historic part of London by the meat market, they have their own way of saying it.

It’s not that we were *expecting* to be let into our room early, or that we felt entitled to it, just that in every hotel I have ever been in, they at least check whether your room has been cleaned. Not respond with what I am sure was a Gallic shrug, and tell us to come back at 3pm.

(Confused, read the The Nigel Noshes Cockney Translator…)

It was the start of a long customer service spiral that continued until we checked out.

The check in was a pain in the bum: Having completed the online check in I had expected to be in my room in seconds, but no, we had to repeat all of our details, including reading out our credit card, even though we were paying then and there using Apple Pay *and* had given a card guarantee as part of the reservation and so called check in online.

Fortunately the room, Smithfield, was amazing, with a bath slap bang in the middle of the room, which is Mrs NIgel Nirvana.

There were niggles. If you can call being dirty for half the stay a niggle.

No water at all when we woke up on Saturday, and clearly this was not a new issue. The boiler reset (which the manager seemed only too familiar with) failed, and an engineer had to be called. He did at least restore cold water fairly quickly, although as the tap kept falling off, it was not always easy to obtain.

In a not uncommon failing for rooms where none of the staff has ever spent a night, the shower leaked all over the floor. You would have thought the cleaner would mention that every towel they pick up from this room is completely sodden, thrown to the floor in a bid to stop the rising tide.

But honestly, the room was great: Nice comfortable bed (although no reading light on one side), some tea and coffee (again a bit of a room servicing fail), a fridge with an “honesty” bar (Honestly, it was stupid expensive, and there is a Tesco round the corner), and the location is amazing, just a few steps to Farringdon Elizabeth Line, which itself is right by Smithfield Market. It allowed us to whiz around town, but stay out of the crowded centre (apart for a trip for a Ruby with avid readers S&M). The Barbican Cinema is only 10 minutes away, and if you happen to have an aged relative recovering from an operation at Barts (which by a massive coincidence I did), it’s just over 5 minutes. It is such stuff as dreams are made on (oh, yes, you can hit the Royal Shakespeare Company with a well aimed stone from there as well)

The pub underneath the rooms, though, was just terrible. We dropped in two nights after dinner for a nightcap. Except every glass of wine we ordered was off the menu, the white wine we could get was served in a hot measure from the dishwasher, and at exactly 11pm, a tornado of staff came round, banging things down on tables, mantelpieces and other flat surface they could find, while bright lights were shone from the ceiling at the bemused remaining punters. There is a reason why pubs call “Last Orders”, but this was clearly not in the manual. I understand that staff costs in hospitality are high now, and that the bar doesn’t want to pay huge amounts of overtime, but it was just rude to basically evict people who were enjoying the last sips of their evening. But that reflected the overall attitude of the staff, who ranged from indifferent to just rude.

The grand finale was checkout. I tried to use the online checkout, but that was clearly equally connected to the hotel system as the check in was. So I stood in what turned out to be a very long queue of one, behind a poor visitor from overseas who was being told repeatedly she had not paid for her room, even though she (like me) has been asked to pay when she checked in. In the end I just dumped my key and ran as I had a train to catch, my ears ringing with demands that I stopped so they could check the ledger.

Mrs Nigel was not overly pleased when I described the situation as something out of National Lampoon’s European Vacation when I wrote my letter of complaint (although she wholeheartedly agreed with the rest of the contents), as she feels I can end up just the wrong side of insulting sometimes, but the whole thing (no hot water, bits falling off, leaks, indifferent service, bad check in and out experience) sends a poor message about UK Hospitality at a time when it is struggling.

So I was delighted that the team at Young’s jumped into action, and actually did something about it. I got a very detailed letter back in answer to my own detailed letter, with a promise that they would work specificially on the hospitality at the Fox & Anchor, and with a generous compensatory voucher.

In recognition of that, I am upping the star count for this review, as I do want other people to go and try it out, and a 3/5 is not going to make you run up the Apples and Pears to try out an Uncle Ned. I am thinking of sneaking back to the Rub-a-dub myself at some point and see whether things are a bit more cushty.

Conclusion

Overall Rating: 4/5

• Rooms: 4.5/5
• Service: 1/5
• Drinks: 3.5/5
• Value for money: 5/5
• Would we go back: At that price, yes, even if Basil Fawlty ran the place
  

Fox & Anchor: https://www.foxandanchor.com/