The Secret Tea Garden — Restaurant in Gauteng

Came here specially for the tea for two to spoil my mother in law for mothers day. When we sat down we were blown away by the venue and enjoyed the live music. When we asked about the tea for two the waitress rudely told us that it's only available till 2:30 so we ordered cake and waited to order coffee when she came back. The waitress only came back about 20 minutes later with 2 of the cakes and still hadn't taken our drinks orders so we asked for the freezos and my mom in law took the tea.

The slices of cake came at 5-10 minute intervals so half the table had to wait for their cakes while the other half of us had cake. The chocolate cakes were dry and tasteless and the other cakes were nothing special. Eventually our drinks order came and the freezo tasted more like ice coffee than a freezo (I wonder what their ice coffee tastes like). For the freezo being R42 this was very disappointing. Besides this, the only reason that they came faster was because Tumi helped our waitress while juggling her own tables. To top this off every second table around us was still receiving the tea for two which was infuriating as this was the main reason we had been excited to come here.

When my father-in-law asked if our waitress is new, Tumi told us that she's pregnant and going through some stuff. This made us feel rather compassionate towards her so we decided to give her a chance and chose to watch instead. She seemed perfectly ok smiling and dancing to the music in the kitchen area while not bothering to serve our table. She also seemed to only have our table assigned to her as she only ever came to our table the entire time that she was there. But whenever she was assisting us she was sullen in a bad mood.

We asked to speak to the manager after this and he apologized that we got the poor service but had a lot to say how they had 300 guests for the day, the team is tired, kitchen busy, we were the only ones that...

NEVER go there and NEVER organise an important event for you, your kids or your family in this place! The place itself is beautiful and this attracts people only to get very disappointed from horrible service, poor quality and quantity of food,which is extremely overpriced. We went yesterday to celebrate the 80th birthday of our aunty and these people just ruined the occasion. We ordered a simple chicken burger at 2pm and at 3:10pm it was still not there. All the guests were sitting hungry, on an empty table with just drinks for more than an hour, as their food was delayed also. We asked several times about the food and every time we were told that it's coming just now. Finally, when we had to leave as we have a little baby, at 3:10pm, we called the waitress to cancel our order, she started basically shouting at us:" I was pushing at the kitchen to do your order and now you are cancelling?!" It seems according to this lady "just now" is at least an hour and it seems the time to pull a dish in this kitchen is at least an hour. Ridiculous! While the horrible waitress was shouting at us, another one appeared with the "burger" for R120. It was actually the mini version of a slider with exactly 5 slices of chips on the side! 1 hour and 10 min waiting time for this miserable miniature of food?!!!! We just told them to pack the food for us, as we were basically forced to take it, and left! Hungry, disappointed, offended with our special occasion ruined irreversibly. I also don't think there's a bigger insult for a restaurant where the guest pays a bag of money and leaves hungry! NEVER, NEVER, NEVER go to this place and NEVER, NEVER, NEVER eat...

The rating is based on my recent experience. The tea garden has always been one of my favourite venues, however this recent trip has left be disappointed.

It all ended up to be a disappointing experience, which all started off when I ordered the beef lasagne, the meal I received was beyond horrible. It was not fresh, not recently made or even heated properly.

The cheese was placed on top and microwave melted, the taste of the pasta was stale, it was not fresh at all. 2 forks later I pushed it aside.i could not finish it

The 2nd issue was the fact that we waited 50min for our food. It made no sense that on such a busy day that there would only be 3 waiters working and then to juggle between a function and regular customers.

It seems unfair that the venue was short staffed and us the customers have to suffer. This is odd that the standard has dropped.not sure what the difference is but it's not the same.

It's also pointless to blame the waiters, all they do is serve the food,rather it is the responsibility of the manager or owner to ensure that there is enough staff available to serve regular guests aswell as to serve a function.

Also as a regular you might want to make use of a mention board which let people know which staff and chef if working so that you build a regular rep with the people and you know who takes care of your needs.

So it will help when we know who is cooking out food and when the regular person is not there.

I hope it changes and improves but today was just...