Yesterday, early evening, Hunter went with a friend to The Maynard in Park Road, Crouch End. We have been there a few times before for a drink and a meal, usually on Sundays for the live Jazz and really enjoyed the place. It used to be a terrible dive, but a while back they decided to go upmarket, offering a gastro-pub menu, good range of wines and spirits and pulling in a far more middle-class, if bohemian crowd.
But, guess what, folks? It has reverted to type! My friend got there before me at about 7pm and said later he should have got the message that things had changed by the strong smell of sweat in the place. He noticed too that the varnished wooden table he sat at had acquired a lot of gouges in the surface.
We ordered drinks, two main meals and two side dishes, paid for in advance. One of the main dishes was billed as an 'Aberdeen Angus Burger' and cost £8.95. But after a couple of mouthfuls, my hungry friend pulled a face and examined the burger: it was one of those thin, flat processed things, compressed mechanically recovered, meat and gristle slurry, squashed down to an even centimetre thickness. We are not talking about anything like the fresh prepared burgers you can buy in M&S or Sainsbury's -- no, this was more like the frozen burgers sold by the sack in Iceland. The friend was so hungry, he just pulled the rest of the burger onto the side of the plate and carried on eating the salad, the bun and fries. When our barman/waiter came over to ask if everything was okay with our meals, we asked quietly and politely whether, if he'd "ordered an Aberdeen Angus burger in a place like this, he would expect a burger like this?" His answer? "No. You can even see the air bubbles in it." He went off to tell the Chef. 15 minutes later when neither he nor the chef had (re-)appeared, we got up to leave -- at which point a stroppy chef did surface claiming "It doesn't say in the menu what percentage beef it is -- it's 80%." Pathetic! In a gastro-pub, at £8.95 for a single burger, wouldn't you expect them to do better? As the friend said before we left: "You're taking the piss!" Out of the £23 bill, you would have expected them at least to have 'comped' the cost of the burger to keep regular customers happy.
We left and moved on for a drink elsewhere. But within an hour Hunter was hit by terrible stomach pains and only just made it to the pub loo before vomiting and being struck with diarrhoea. I quickly hailed a cab to go home -- but had to ask the driver to stop en route so that I could get out and be sick again. Dr. James says that it's a classic case of food poisoning: diaarhoea and vomiting with an onset one hour after eating. So it seems that even though it was my friend who had the crap burger, it was my 'okay but unremarkable' beef and ale pie which was the really bad part of the deal.
I have reported this to the environmental health people at Haringey Council for further investigation. In the meantime, don't bother going to The Maynard: it seems their standards are slipping all round and they haven't a clue about customer service.
Notes: The Maynard N8, Park Road, How-not-to-treat-customers, Food-poisoning
