Village Green Cafe & Bar — Restaurant in South Island

We have been coming to the Village Green from the day it has opened as it is our local and have always had a great expariance we have celebrated birthdays on many occasions and tonight was no exception as it was our daughters birthday and we decided to choose your restaurant to dine . I made the booking over 2 weeks ago And tonight arrived with a birthday cake as we have in the past , But on going to Seattle our bill that was $140 odd on Food and $50 on Drinks we were told we had to pay $15 for bringing the cake in , We were never informed of this either on the booking or when i handed the cake over to the lady that greeted us . When my husband asked to speak to the manager she said she presumed i knew as this was the policy because i just handed the cake over !! and also said it should have been mentioned upon booking . She was clearly annoyed that we were asking about the charge and we also said we have never been charged anywhere else ever for a cake Corkage i understand but not a cake and not $15 she said it covers what the restaurant will miss out on with dessert When infact i would never normally order dessert or the other people at the table so there is no missing out on anything . Village Green Under the current financial struggle that hospitality is having with many People choosing to not dine out unnecessarily charging customers like this is unresonable at the very least put this on your menu or website to give customers the choice of wanting to take a birthday cake into your establishment instead of blindsiding them , it was embarrassing and we will never dine at your resturant again Your Manager handled it very poorly She may have apologized but it was more to get us going out the door . The right thing would have been was to waiver the fee as we feel totally duped and there was no mention from your booking person your website there was nothing in writing near the counter or menu so How are we suppose to know this. It made what started off a lovley evening ending up a stressful and very annoyed as we could have easily gone...

A very busy venue for lunch with apologetic staff for the wait. Totally understandable. However a really disappointing vegetarian burger experience, today. A burger with tomato relish, lettuce, mayonnaise and two hash browns, all served up with fries. Now I’m a vegetarian, not just limited to spuds and I quite fancy other veggies, such as tomato, beetroot, cucumber, even carrot. Waitress apologised for the lack of vegetables and agreed that there should have been at least some tomato. She said that she would raise my concerns with the chef. When paying at the till, I explained my concerns, and apparently se was the Manager, and she kindly gave me 25% of my $26.00, burger. So kind of her, however her lack of apology was deafening. She too was going to talk with the chef. Unfortunately, I didn’t and won’t ever get the benefit from the Chef’s new training,but I hope someone else does. I won’t...

Four of us turned up without a booking on Sunday 11 am for Brunch - the person looked at us like we had 3 heads each and before we had said anything, said they were full. We could hear from the background someone to the affect of telling us to get lost Then another lady yelled from behind the screen "it may not look like we are full but we've got a big booking coming in soon" My husband asked what time was the big booking and the lady yelled "at 12" so we had an hour - we weren't even asked if we wanted to have a coffee? There was no apology, no face to face and no chance to try any food or drink. So, unfortunately I can't give the food a rating - it may be great, but the service was appalling and none of us will be going back to try. A real shame as it is in our local area & food on menu...