Poor Wulf & Lamb opened in Marylebone just as covid forced it to close. Situated at one of those residential money laundering towers where there are never any lights on and nobody is ever working-out in the all-too-visible first flour gym, the rent over the enforced closure must have been a killer.
But it reopened. Which is great news, especially when others around (Fucina, Cassa Becci, Bao & Bing) have all failed to.
So having survived, we thought we'd try it, especially as it offers Happy Hour every week day. What a wonderful combination of words "Happy Hour every week day". So we had no choice but to try it.
On entry, we made it clear we wanted drinks only. No problem we were assured. Having been sat and given menus, we asked if Happy Hour was on. Our waitress didn't know, so went off to check. She came back and confirmed that indeed it was, so we duly ordered our cocktails. Before they came, another waiter asked is if we wanted to order drinks. No worries, we said, we have done. Off he left. Our drinks arrived. Said second waiter then came and asked us if we were ready to order food. Having confirmed we really did only want drinks, as we'd already said, we set about enjoying them. Nice though they were, they were small, the Rosemary Negroni had no perceptive taste of rosemary and came with a ice cube so large the dried orange had nowhere to go, and the Peach Bellini tasted of nothing but prosecco.
Anyway, we'd come for Happy Hour, so another cocktail was required. At which point our waitress brought us the Happy Hour menu. What? There's a separate Happy Hour menu? What bit wasn't clear about our reason for being there? We wanted a drink and wanted to take advantage of Happy Hour. So why not give us the Happy Hour menu immediately, or at least tell us there was one? As it was, we'd accidentally managed to order one from the Happy Hour menu without knowing it (although a second was never going to happen) and one off.
Having gone in, said we were in for Happy Hour, you don't bother to give us the relevant bloody menu? OK, its a vegan restaurant so unlikely to be bloody, but you get the point.
If the place had been rushed off its feet, it is possible to have maybe forgiven them. Each waiter had one table to look after.
So we paid and left, having missed the Happy Hour that we'd so abundantly made clear we were there for through the incompetance of the waiting staff. As we left, we pointed out the stupidty of the way that our evening had been handled. Our waitress agreed, but did nothing about it: no "let me treat it a if it was Happy Hour", no "let me check with the manager", just a bill that was what it should have been, but just for half the number of drinks we'd expected. Like I told her, we'll never go back, so, along with all those that failed in the pandemic, that's one more restaurant we're down locally. Maybe those that do will get the basics right. Wulf & Lamb failed abysmally to do so.