Beefeater Haywain — Restaurant in Basildon

A real Jekyll and Hyde experience.

I avoided this Beefeater for months after a bad service with the chef(s) refusing a simple side dish swap, making the waitress apologise on the kitchens behalf while on the verge of tears from doing this for them so many times.

After witnessing this I steered clear of this Beefeater like the plague but was tempted back recently with a voucher and dubiously gave them another shot. The food quality on this visit was steller; steaks arrived swiftly and was Michelin quality. The service was- as always- amazing, and it made me think this Beefeater was turning over a new leaf.

So after such a positive experience recently I booked another table; mid-week dinner service and walked into an excited but otherwise not busy evening. The waitress Danielle was lovely throughout the entire night, she flew over to our table whenever we needed her and our drinks were served swiftly, the same sadly cannot be said for the food from the kitchen.

We sat down at our table at five o'clock; our mains were not served until six, and I overheard other patrons complain about how slow the kitchen was. When the food did arrive straight away visually there was a severe drop in quality from the last visit. Half of the chips were burnt brown, the steak fillet was a charcoal lump of leather and the cut itself looked like it had been hung up by a string and hacked at by a blindfolded child like a pinata.

Worse still despite being charred black on the outside when the person I was dining with cut into the meat it was still streaming blood (they ordered medium-well). I cut into mine and found it was overcooked to the point of being well-done (I asked for medium) I realised now the kitchen had not only mixed up our plates but had overcooked a medium-well fillet and undercooked a medium. I asked the waitress for the steaks to be sent back, and Danielle was more than happy to do so.

Ten minutes later our plates returned, but rather than- at least, put the food on fresh plates the kitchen had refired the previous steaks on the grill, dumped the recooked steak back into the now cold puddle of blood on my fellow diners plate that was soaking into the chips and sent it straight back out to us.

My fellow diner looked down at the chared lump of grisle swimming in blood and was ready to leave but I gave the kitchen one last chance and just said cut into the steak and see if they cooked it enough.

We cut into our steaks and found that, once again, the plates had been mixed up. Somehow the steak fillet meant for me was again undercooked and spat blood onto the plate of the person with me when sliced, and the one on my plate meant for my fellow diner was a cremated slab of leathery jerky.

Once again the waitresses apologised on behalf of the abysmal kitchen they are serving food from and were happy for us to leave without paying for the mains, just the drinks.

We ended up dining in the Harvester across the road, which despite having a menu focused on chicken cooked a better steak fillet than a Beefeater and had a much more vibrant and bubbly atmosphere.

Needless to say, we wont be returning to this Beefeater. Voucher...

Quite possibly the worst place we’ve ever eaten! Had a table of 9 booked, 5 adults 4 kids. Arrived for 5pm the first front of house member of staff was rude and didn’t seem to care. The table wasn’t ready had to wait 20 mins, eventually we was shown to a round table upstairs that we was all crammed around, wasn’t greeted by a waitress or offered a drink and after another 20 Mins I had to go looking for a staff member to ask for drinks. The front of house lady came up and took our drinks order and food order and our drinks arrived 15 mins later and our starter another 15 mins after that! Well! Honestly I don’t know how they had the nerve to serve up the disgusting food that they did! I ordered the prawn cocktail that had stale dry bread on the side, 8 tiny cocktail prawns with no sauce and a heap of curling lettuce that was completely inedible, my partner ordered the calamari and got served something that I think they’d dredged from the bottom of the fryer as there was no calamari in it. The other starters from the rest of our table was equally disgusting. At this point our waitress still hadn’t made herself present even after being told by FOH lady to serve us when we arrived. And when she did show up we was ignored and stood on her fone. We waited another 30 mins for our mains and when we asked FOH lady again she said was ticket number 3 and would have to wait abit longer, it was at this point that we’d had enough it was 6.45pm and we had 4 hungry toddlers that hadn’t liked their starters and was getting restless jammed into our table area. So we gave up and I went to settle up what we owed and leave to go elsewhere, then they tried to charge me £134 when I said I’m not paying that for a round of drinks and a disgusting starter FOH lady amended the bill and didn’t charge us anything as an apology for the poor service and atrocious food! Which I might add I had every intention of paying for what we had had. I felt sorry for FOH lady she was clearly out of her depth and I don’t know whether they was short staffed or just have staff that don’t give a crap but sorry to say we shall never return to this place...

The reason I’m not giving a one star is due to previous positive experiences. However, when I went yesterday for my 2 daughters and 2 nieces. I could sense that the waitress who attended to us was stressed as she looked away when I attempted to smile. Although, I understand how stressful working in hospitality can be so I tried to empathise and dismiss it. I later discovered that she was not the only staff member who was behaving hostile. She first asked how many seats we needed but then she repeated the number back with a confused and somewhat inpatient tone. She then went on to explain that there was nothing until 4 hours later. As I went to ask my family whether they wanted to order food from the bar the waitress walked away but I was still taken back by her hostility and apparent lack of willingness to assist for whichever unknown reasons. Another gentleman who claimed to be a manager apologised for their lack of capacity but then later told us that we couldn’t even order from the bar ‘because it was too busy in the kitchen’. The logic behind his explanations became frustrating considering the fact that there were at least 6 free tables in sight of the entrance and I couldn’t comprehend how the kitchen could be at full capacity if there were empty reserved tables. I also have experience in this industry to emphasise how nonsensical his reasoning was. In the end we decided not to waste another minute on their apparent lack of customer service. I just think it’s a bit unfortunate and silly considering that they’ve cost their employers business. The two staff bit the hand that is feeding them by going out of their to deny potential customers a meal...