Orion Hotel — Restaurant in Ipswich City

Edit: On request of the manager on duty to review my review after going and attempting to locate myself, starting the conversation off rather aggressive it would seem, when the manager was informed that the night began with a missed place booking then proceeded into us being given 26 chairs for a 30 person booking, they where asked if more seating was available then meet with a foul tone of 'well do you really need 30, is everyone actually going to show up', staff where responded to with yes all 30 people are hear right now. A solution was made with a camp pop up table for the children to sit around.

Regards to the food orders..... I am assuming that because the booking was lost the kitchen was not prepared for it, reason being of the 6 meals missing, 3 seperate orders, 3 meals from those orders where actually brought out, the reason we where given that the orders did not come out was because the tickets to the kitchen did not print, I take my hat off the the kitchen for having telepathic ability to read the orders of the the people that managed to come out.

The meals did come out eventually, approximately 1 hr after everyone else(who ordered after us at the same table) received theirs, there was a offer to rectify mistake with free entree's ( the entree's from the missing order had still not come out) which was declined, then offer of drinks ( we had already received offer of free soft drink for previous error). The suggestion from us was to receive a discount on the meal, not a full refund as we where informed that the food was coming. When told the food was being prioritsed we asked that the kids meal missing and a particular entree meal for another child be priority above ours as it was now 830 and the children had not received their meal. 1 of the children's meal was prioritsed the other came out last after the missing adult meals came out.

We where offered $200 voucher to use on our next visit ( I'm sorry with that amount of mistakes throughout the night do you really think we will return) we informed the staff member that we are from 3 different families, 3 vouchers where presented ( I'm not sure they understood that we would not be returning so much so that at least one of the vouchers was discarded based on that fact so in reality paid for extremely poor service)

Then to have the manager ask us to review the review ( my understanding from this, take it down)

This is a further reflection of the poor service of the venue, from the discussion disclosed the only concern of the manager was ' did everyone get their meals in the end' yes we did but what a mission it was to get it, I understand that we are moving to a self serve society but I did not think that involved restaurants also.

My review remains but under request of the manager I have reviewed that review.

Take it as you wish after reading this review but this was our experience. And because of that experience our future events for special occasions will not be conducted at this venue.

Original review.

Apparently when you book 2 weeks in advance and they forget your booking and then double book it's not their problem. Was going to hold a few birthday events this year. Might try Falveys instead

Food slow to come out.

And also not come out, 6 meals no show.

Rectification with a voucher to the place, kinda pointless no one in their right mind would return to poor service like this.

Honestly complete joke at this place. Walk...

Below average and bland was our experience. Upon arrival we're greeted by security who takes our picture and asks for i.d.. when I asked why take photo of us and i.d., I was told "in case something happens, they'll be able to see if we were involved and know who we are." Not very comforting; makes me think they have a violence problem. We walked into the restaurant area and waited by the hostess desk; nobody came. I then walked up to where you order food and informed the young man that we were here for 7:30 dinner. He told me, "sorry we don't have any tables". I explained we had a reservation; he than takes us back to hostess desk were he checks the reservation book and says, "oh yea, you're at table 14" and points to the end of the bar and tells us our table is around the corner of the bar. I looked at him like "what" and he said follow him. We followed him to our table (reserved sign visible), but there were people sitting at it. He turned and didn't know what to do, but eventually gave us a booth near the kitchen which would have been more suitable for the four people who sat at our reserved table. He sat us in the booth and gave no instructions on how or where to order. Yes, it isn't hard to figure out for people from the area, but still not very professional. When I went to order. I was told they were out of the dish my wife ordered ( which they prominently advertised on their menu as "NEW"). After finally getting the order in, I was told I had to order drinks somewhere else. I went to the location to order drinks ( gin & soda and a long island iced tea $31). Apparently they only had one bartender in the restaurant and that might of been okay, but so many people from outside bar area were walking in to restaurant to order drinks because the wait was so long outside. I waited over 20 minutes for my drinks, I don't recall how much longer than 20 minutes, but by the time I got my first drink, the meals were at the table. That brings us to the food; I had the Cajun chicken burger ($20) and my wife had chicken parmi($24). There was nothing Cajun about my chicken. It was bland and the bun was dry. My wife's parmi was a good portion, but she couldn't eat it because it was so dry and bland. We still tried our best to make it an enjoyable evening with conversation, but it was too noisy from bar outside we couldn't hear each other. We finished our drinks and left...

After being physically assaulted by a server I will NEVER return!

I went to dinner at this place with my wife and my wives friend and her new boyfriend. our meal was ordered and never arrived, we complained and they apparently didn't have our order. we were given some free drinks and made to wait over an hour before we received our food. food was decent.

when we went to pay the line was 20 people long with one server. everyone in line was frustrated and unhappy with the long wait. when we got to the server the new boyfriend paid for his meal, however the server was having problems with the payment system, she ended up getting it sorted and telling the new boyfriend he was paid so he left.

When I was last to pay I was informed by the server there is still a meal and drinks on our table to be paid (the boyfriends food) as this was not my dinner and the server already told the boyfriend he was paid I refused to pay his bill for their stuff up. she then refused to let me pay for my meal and told me if I didn't pay for everything left she would phone the police.

I asked the server to please phone the police or I will be leaving as I have offered to pay for my meal and was refused. The server then declined to phone the police so i began to leave the site. The server then grabbed me by my arm and dug her nails into my skin telling me I was not leaving.

The boyfriend ended up coming back and sorting out his bill, however, this server was lucky I decided to go and enjoy my night instead of phoning the police and charging her with assault as there were plenty of witnesses. The server needs to be fired and owners need to pull this place into order. ridiculous that clients are assaulted when their system stuffs up. needless to say they lost a lot of return clients that evening as children were frightened at this servers behavior! and parents...