CBK Masterton (Craft Bar and Kitchen) — Restaurant in Masterton

I have been working in hospitality for 6 years and have never come across a more unpleasant encounter than the one that I had at CBK masterton. I was delivered a meal that I had unintentionally ordered off the menu in confusion between two meals which I was happy to shrug off , however upon trying a small part of meal I was extremely disappointed. The flavour was nothing like I had ever tasted before and was so unappetising. I spoke to the waitress and asked if there was anything that we could do about the situation. She then went out back and the owner came to the table who was instantly aggressive and snappy with me. Saying that I had ordered the wrong thing, he didn’t care and I still had to pay full price. I was so taken aback by his reaction that I decided to speak to our waitress one more time and express how I felt to her. She was very understanding and said she wished that she could help the situation and that the way he spoke to me was not okay. I would like to mention that I was not rude in any manner and that I was putting my best foot forward into coming to an agreement within the situation as I work in hospitality and know exactly how this would feel if I were. The owner continued to speak to me in an aggravated loud tone and said that he would call the cops on me if I refused to pay. I was wanting to find a simple solution for example a small amount of the price taken off my meal or a free drink but the owner was so nasty and talking over the top of me every time I tried to say something. I am in utter shock of his customer service and am ashamed to be apart of a hospitality industry where people like this are able to run restaurants with kind paying customers. I would love to say that I enjoyed the starters , however the experience that I had this evening ruined everything. He called the police on me because I was wanting a small compensation for my terrible meal and was too stubborn to offer me anything. He tricked my friend who was with me into paying for my meal....

Hi

This review is associated with our family lunch we had at Cbk. We dined on 12 July

We arrived around opening time and ordered meals with the front of house young lady which was really good with the banter and friendly manner

Drinks were ordered which arrived in a reasonable time frame as our party of 11 had time to catch up while we waited

However from that point things were not so great!!

After an extraordinary period of time waiting for the meals we had to go to the bar and check on the progress of our meals then within a few minutes these appeared progressively over the next 10 minutes with chips for our younger family members and our meals followed on

Amongst the orders were 2 seafood chowders

These meals were disgusting. - It appears from the style of the 2 chowder meals the chef may have gone to the local supermarket while we waited to buy a bag of frozen cubed vegetables, three prawns couple of bits of whitefish and a few mussels to “make” the meals With this it seemed from the meal the chef just used some flour/water and mixed the whole lot up in a big pot and slapped this on a plate with raised edges to prevent the “soup” from flowing off during serving

We attempted to eat the chowder after requesting a spoon to help to consume it

We then went to settle the account and raised our concerns. We were asked by the till administrator if our meals were ok. Obviously we complained

With this and to the credit of the front of restaurant staff we were asked what to do to remedy this. We responded to send the chef to “seafood chowder school”

Our experience was not good but the gift card was well appreciated to offset the “chowder...

We had dinner here my family (8 of us). Positives first - Lovely atmosphere and friendly staff... My sister enjoyed her gluten free chicken burger and the curly fries, pizza and mac and cheese for the kids were good.

Unfortunately there were negatives.. which did outweigh the positives on this occasion the food myself and my fiance had was not great, which was sad as I'd been recommended to go here. Two of the meals (kaimoana chowder and nasi goreng) were extremely, overpoweringly salty, I could only manage to eat half my meal and that was only because I was starving. We did tell the staff at the time (both during the meal and as I went to pay) but nothing was done at the time apart from "sorry I'll let the chef know". Later after getting home both my son and my mother started vomiting through the night (we are guessing it was probably from the salad as that's all they had in common on their dishes and nobody else had leafy greens).

I did email about this and we were contacted and offered a 10% discount for next time.... However, considering we spent a fair amount, had two meals that were absolutely terrible and another two seperate dishes that we are pretty certain caused food poisoning (it was definitely not a bug as nobody else got sick at all) we feel this is a bit insufficient... Having just done my lead auditor course and HACCP training I do hope they actually also looked into their procedures to address this and hopefully they'll consider better customer satisfaction policies in...