Gateway Tavern — Restaurant in South Island

Had our wedding here, location perfect, decor perfect. That's where the perfect ends. Initially contact was hard to interpret and a lot of confusion (staff changes). Ajay the original and first manger problem solved and was great to deal with. We appreciated Ajays ability to compromise and cater for what we needed. However Shortage of staff meant no table service was to offer for function. Buffet option was the only choice - entrees very poor. Crusty bread and ran out for guests, main meal was good and enjoyable. Desserts on the run sheet stated cheesecake to be served. Didn't deliver. Used all our wedding cake for the dessert - not the plan. $89 p/h for a good main but terrible entrees and desserts unsatisfactory and quite frankly disappointing. Bar was able to be manned in seperate function room but - 'apparently® needed to be clearly stated on the run sheet, however this was asked upon a an initial visit and was told yes the bar would be manned. It didn't. Upon requesting to see a drink/receipt post function in attempted remediation email they weren't able to provide one .. who knows what was charged/added to the tab in the end. In reply to our email we were accused of a burn mark in a table cloth, interesting when we provided table cloths after being told wrong dimensions - NONE of our table cloths had burn marks. Very questionable how they could of possibly had a burn mark when ours that were on top of theirs. Keith the current manager was not pleasant, friendly to deal with post function trying to remediate lack of dessert. The music in function room failed upon entrance for wedding party and our guests were accused of wrongfully pushing a button when on the evening Keith admitted it was his staff in the restaurant that caused the disruption. Staff were less than helpful, enthusiastic or attentive (no smiles and long waits at bar). Typical function noise was tried to be kept inside around 9:30/10pm guests were either shut in or out. Unfortunately this place had / has great potential for functions, hotel stays and meals but it seriously dropped the ball on our...

For sure we wont be coming back there anymore. after a very bad experince, you give all your trust for a birthday dinner finding out the next morning you’ve been rip off for all the price changes they put on your bill that is very different from the menus, charge children bb rib double the price of what it say in menu, called them measage them about it been very patience of waiting keep saying the front staff that serve us is still sick which is very fine to me , but hey she isnt the only staff that night, they have cctv to check just, they have till history to check send them my reciept aswell and clearly there is a problem there , as two meal of children bb rib cost us $67 and others (which i wont put on to details ) which is shocking!! and by the looks of it they keep telling me to wait for an investigation, i wont get rich for that refund of money, but Hey you guys you should be building trust on your costumer specialy on locals, all i want to hear from you is that you are sorry for a reckles attitude/decision and if there is a foul management that it will be change as regular costumer like us who decide to celbrate special occasion at yout place wont be back there again for this unproffesional experience. for sure people will hear our bad experience from you if they will ask us, and no recomendations from us, I work in hospitaly business aswell, our costumer mostly ask us what are the nice restaurant to go at hanmer as they will spend the weekend, and for sure you are not going to be on our list. thanks for...

Girls weekend away... looking forward to this for months. We ordered the Venison Wellington and my meat was raw and my friends meat was over done, so we sent it back and asked for the same meal again. The manager came over to apologise and said there would be a wait (it was 8pm now and we arrived at 7pm), I suggested that if there is a wait we could have a starter of his choice. We ordered a second drink and the starter arrived, which was incredibly salty crumbed chicken. Nevertheless we were hungry and had high hopes for our Venison Wellingtons. An hour later we decided to get up and go to another restaurant! Did the "wait" mean an hour? Would it be better courtesy/service to come tell us that the meal would be out shortly or perhaps we were forgotten? No, no one came and when we left we did the right thing by paying for our drinks, the manager apologised and said the chef had left and they are trying their best so he discounted one drink each.To be honest we should have paid for nothing and received a voucher in the hope that 5 Stags could redeem themselves on our next visit to Hanmer! If you have limited staff, the best thing is to communicate with your patrons, we would have understood and stayed. We called another restaurant at 9:10pm and we were served...