Four Seasons — Restaurant in Basildon

My family and I came here for my sons 3rd birthday on the 8th of March where we live is the same road . We ordered 5 meals in all at the bar. We were waiting at least 20 mins/30 mins and it didn't really seem that busy. 4 of the meals arrived all together. After a  few mins I decided to go to the bar to see what the problem was.....I have been brought up with manners so was waiting my turn which after being constantly ignored and everyone else just pushing in I went to someone who was standing at the till. She was very abrupt and rude and didn't apologise at all for the missing meal or the mess up Apparently it ended up that whoever took the order did not add a full English breakfast. The girl I spoke to about the missing meal was very rude, pointing out that the whole day no one on our table number had ordered a breakfast. We eventually ordered and payed for another breakfast and was told again we would have to wait at least 30-45mins for this meal and there was nothing they could do to speed up the missing food. We asked if we could have fried bread, which we were told by the person on the till "They would have to speak to their chef  to see if they can make fried bread!!!!" She was speaking like she owned the place or was a manager and the "chef" worked for her!!. The food we did get at first was all cold so after the way we were treated over one meal we decided to eat the other meals. When the breakfast did eventually arrive it was very disappointing and nothing like I remember hungry horses breakfast to be here . Mind you if the "chef" can't cook fried bread I wouldn't expect them to be able to make any simple meal!!!! We were Totally disappointed by the whole experience and it was nothing like what I remember this "restaurant" to be the last time I visited. We felt that we would have been better off going to toby or Harvester, especially as the amount we paid we would have at least expected hot food and better service. We should've took food home for the dog. We ended up not...

Had a decent lunch here and the service was pretty good too. Plenty of spaces in the car park when we visited. It wasn't too loud inside and we got a table without making a reservation.

When we first arrived, there isn't a greeting station as such so we wasn't sure if we could just grab a table to eat, or if we had to be seated by a member of staff. It wasn't really clear. We ended up just finding somewhere to sit ourselves. We couldn't see a sign saying please wait to be seated so we just carried on.

We chose to order from the app as it's easier with 2 little ones, than going up to the bar. We had no issues with the app and it all worked fine and our order came accurately and promptly. They also have an estimated time for food or drink on the app which is a nice touch.

Once our drinks came over, a member of staff made us aware of a feed the family for £15 promotion they had going on currently. This was great to hear, except we had already ordered all of our food and drinks and spent more than double this. She said it was too late to make use of the promotion now and we would have to do it next time we came in.

I was quite gutted that we had missed out on this deal but I also didn't recall seeing it anywhere. So I picked the menu up, couldn't see it advertised on the menu. Went onto the app, couldn't see it advertised anywhere on the app. I was then told it's on the hungry horse website, but the app you have to use to order is the Greene King app... So when was I meant to see this deal? Maybe there's a poster up in the pub somewhere showing this deal, but I don't tend to walk around looking out for these types of things. Would have been nice if it was more obvious when we was at the table or it was shown on the Green King app when ordering.

Other than that, we had a nice meal in here and even without the £15 deal it was good value for money. Would definitely recommend and we will be...

Disappointed.

After being sat down at a table we soon realised that not a single member of staff had actually asked or told us to fill in a track and trace form. There seems to be no rules as to whether employees should or shouldn't wear masks; one lady delivered our food with a mask on, but another delivered three drinks clutched between her hands around the rim of the glass with no mask on. Either the employees haven't been trained at all to cope with the virus or they simply don't care about following the rules given to them. Either way its hardly a nice experience to drink from the same glass another person has had their fingers on the rim of. The food was generally okay but we couldn't have our first choice of meal because they had ran out of steak and refused to substitute it for anything else. We also found it funny that we couldn't order onion rings because they had ran out, but two of the meals we ordered then came with onion rings... The food issues are forgivable, everywhere runs out of food items and the food we did receive was hot and tasted fine. The lack of awareness for social distancing and prevention of the virus definitely needs to be taken care of though.

EDIT: Spoke to management and they assured me they would speak to employees about wearing masks while serving a tables and would make sure track and trace forms are filled out. Offered a drinks voucher as a kind gesture which i decided to decline as i didn't feel like compensation was needed. Bumped the rating up to 3 stars rather than 1 for dealing...