Thar and Feather — Restaurant in Invercargill City

Well this is a review that is praising the trainee there at Thar and Feather, and a staff member that has been a staff member for a while also, BUT, is NOT praising the lady in charge there in the restaurant area on Friday 22/09/2023.

When we arrived, the lady in charge (I am pretty sure her name was Nikki) came to the desk and asked if she could help us. There was no smile and a very matter of fact manner. My wife said "A table for two please, down for 6:30pm". The lady, again no nicities or smile said "You have a reservation?!" I said "Yes, it's for 6:30 under the name of..." "Righto!" she said, cutting me off and just walking away, to which we could only presume we were to follow her. She showed us the table and then walked away.

I said as she did so (and under my breath) that a smile wouldn't hurt her.

Within a minute or so, a very nervous young man that was taking our order and seeing to our table all night, came over and introduced himself and took our drink orders and our entree order. He was polite and was moving around very busily all night, by what we both saw. He made sure our choices were to our liking and when I said we would like to order dessert 'to go', he was accommodating and efficient in seeing to this.

When I went up to the counter to pay, the young man came out of the kitchen area and he proceeded to ring up the total I was paying for. The staff member that was more experienced, shadowed him to be there if he needed. The lady just had to finished off the transaction. After I'd paid, the young man saw me not moving and said "Is everything OK?" I laughed a bit and said "Yeah, I'm just waiting for the desserts". The young man said "Oh geez, yeah...sorry. I'll just go check on them". The experienced staff was doing something on the till. The lady in charge then came over and said to me "Is everything OK?" I said "Yes, thank you", and the staff at the til said "He's just waiting for something". "She looked at me and said "What is it?" (Let us note here, that this lady in charge, STILL has not yet smiled or even looked friendly once yet since we have arrived!). I said "I am waiting for my desserts order to go to come out". The lady in charge then turned to the one still working at the till and said in front of me - "Why didn't you just SAY that?!" and begain to walk off. "I said "Um...because everything was in hand and there was no issue!". She remained walking away and made no apology to the staff at the till or myself. I found that incredibly unprofessional and unnecessarily belittling of the experienced staff. This is not the first time this particular lady in charge has appeared sour-faced, like she is annoyed she has to be there and, quite frankly, put a damper on the evening. I feel the Thar and Feather would be better to promote another staff member and give this lady in charge the opportunity to go find employment elsewhere...maybe where she can work alone, so there's no one to affect with her attitude but herself.

I was more than satisfied by the conduct and work that the other staff displayed and the food was plentiful and delicious, so this rating would've been 4 ½ stars out of 5 if it wasn't for the attitude of that so called person in charge.

I will be back...but not if I have to deal with Nikki from last night anymore. You SERIOUSLY have to do yourself a favour Thar and Feather, and cut her loose, because the increase in staff morale alone will improve exponentially if you do. If she has been going through some 'issues' in the last year or two, then I will genuinely feel for her, because to be in a head space where you can't ever smile, is awful. Many of us have been there. But, the reality of this situation is, if you have a front-of-house manager-type member who never smiles, is often abrupt and cuts off customers and will then also, in full view and earshot of diners, belittle, chastise (disproportionately) and act unprofessional towards her staff - then for the betterment of your business I'm sure you'll agree that needs to...

Disappointing... again After a previous poor experience we decided to try Thar and Feather again. We wish we didn't. We booked, not that they knew it. That should have been the warning sign. There was 1 relatively large group there which was clearly beyond all capability of the staff to deal with and still provide service and food to any other diners. 55 minutes wait for food, rather average food at that. Then we asked if the group had ordered desert and we were assured they hadn't and would not affect us having our desert. Well, they did! And 15 minutes after ordering the daily special desert we were told there was none left so changed the order. Guess where the special desert went? We watched it carried past our table. Substantially more waiting until our desert came out, burnt.

Food was sub par, staff were pushed beyond skill and capabilities, wait time was ridiculous.

One last chance to make a difference was missed. When paying I was asked how the night was, to which I replied "pretty average to be honest" and was promptly ignored, simply ignored.

We...

Took my family and mother inlaw in for dinner last night as she was over from perth.. Started off really well with good staff serving us taking our order..but unfortunately that's where it ended as after 45min my food came out but it wasn't for another 20mins the next plate came out with a very average steak.another 10min then my daughters beef burger was raw and sent back..my partners Korean chicken was definitely not Korean chicken and was over cooked and sent back..after all that time my son still hadn't received his chicken nuggets and chips after 1hr 20min of waiting..now my mother inlaw has a crook tummy today.. Usually this place is really good but I don't know what's going on in that kitchen at the moment because in my opinion there is no flow and might need a shake up.. Sorry for the bad review but I was quite upset as I had talked it up with my mother inlaw from past experiences.. All that being said the staff In the restaurant were nice 👌.. Definitely a...