Joe's Garage Ashburton — Restaurant in Canterbury

Went to Joes Garage today for a bite to eat - when we walked in there was a group of customers hovering near the front door & staff members walking past without offering information. We were then told to just find a table. It then took around 15/20 minutes to be served for drinks (no mention of ‘sorry for the wait’) we then ordered drinks and food together, just under an hour later we were served our food. Again, no apology for the wait & not asked if we would like to order any more drinks. During our wait, the door kept being pushed completely open by one of the waitresses, which meant we were cold as it was pretty windy outside. She walked over to the door, which I had just closed - pushed it fully open again & then stood by the till and sipped her drink. The same waitress had been sending customers away and saying how busy they were, when it didn’t look busy at all. Not a smile in sight & just made customers feel awkward and uncomfortable, the table next to us also mentioned this to us.

Overall, good food - had better from Joes Garage as my burger was flooded with sauce and coleslaw, however the staff could benefit from working on some customer service. A smile once in a while would go far!

Really...

The staff greeted us and we were told to find out own seat. They bought over menus but never advised the drinks menu was already on the table. When they came back and asked for our drinks order I advised we hadn't even looked at the drinks menu which the waitress left so we could look through it. Less then 2 minutes later we were approached by another staff member asking if we were ready to order drinks. I understand that it wasn't overly busy but would have been nice to have time to looked over the menus before being approached so quickly. We noticed the chef/cook didn't have all her hair tied back or covered, and was touching it as well as her face while preparing the meals. I also noticed her wearing a lot of bracelets and rings on both hand. Not sure if if the food hygiene 167 and 168 have changed so drastically that this is now acceptable practice. It took a while to receive the drinks and the food. We were tempted to walk out at how long it was taking and on top of that the staff were standing around and talking instead of producing efficient service. We were not asked how our meals were until we went to pay. I won't be going back and will be advising others to...

Wouldn't go back we were there last week for a birthday and had a poor experience from the get go. We had to approach staff to order our meals after no one came then waited over an hour and half for our food then when we approached staff as we were waiting a while for our food as the kids were hungry the staff rolled their eyes and whispered amongst themselves and some of our guests had to leave as the wait was too long. To top it off when we came to pay their were extra items we were charged for and we were told by the gentleman that the bill had to be settled before we could leave but after refusing to pay for the items that we did not order a staff member confirmed that some of the items had been charged in error to our table instead of another table so he decided to clear the remaining amount. After reading other reviews other people have experienced the same issues since they opened....