TGI Fridays - Basildon — Restaurant in Basildon

Firstly our server Connor was excellent and we all felt sorry for him for not tipping, but we just couldn’t justify it. The atmosphere is good and they managed to seat a party of 18 for my son’s 18th Birthday. We’ve been many times before over the years and used their takeaway during lockdown and for staff birthdays etc and never had an issue. This time was different though. The first thing that struck us was the hike in prices. £30+ for a rack of ribs, double the price of a harvester or any other mediocre pub. Cocktails were two for one but £16 each. At the end of the day TGI’s is a mediocre grill restaurant, most of the food you can buy in Iceland, so it was a shock to be paying London prices for drinks and higher end prices for food.

The Purple Rain Cocktails were Green and just tasted like syrup. The Strawbery and Bubblegum Daiquiris were excellent but everything was way over priced.

We waited an hour before getting our first round of drinks, which if it had been just my wife and I would would have been a reason to get up a leave. It amazes me that some places don’t realise that by keeping the drinks flowing they could double or triple their profits, whilst keeping guest content.

Then for the food. It tasted nice and there was plenty of it, however 1pm my heads down a toilet throwing up, my wife, son and his girlfriend all had upset stomach. Spoke with the other 3 families the next day and no surprise they too all had upset stomachs.

Nearly £700 for slow service and 18 people to get food poisoning from food you can buy in Iceland is not my idea of value. There are far nicer restaurants for that money with...

I can't believe how far TGI Friday has gone downhill. We used to visit this restaurant regularly, at least once per month but now we just about go once per year. We probably won't be visiting again now, unless there's drastic changes.

The food is RIDICULOUSLY overpriced. Now I will say this chain has always been on the more expensive side but now it's just a joke. £21 for sesame chicken strips and chips main is beyond unreasonable. We spent over £100 for 2 adults and 2 kids. Kids just had mains and drinks. Adults had a starter and main each with a drink each (one alcoholic and one non-alcoholic), nobody had desserts and it was still over £100. Unbelievable for a family restaurant.

Also the food quality has gone downhill too. The new smash burgers are definitely worse quality meat and somehow they're more expensive than their previous iteration of burgers? I can't make sense of it. Reduced the quality of their produce but increased their prices at the same time, not great.

We went for a lunch time slot and there was only a small handful of tables sat down, very quiet. Almost worrying for the restaurant I would say.

Staff were friendly and service was fine just the food and price were...

Appauling meal at this TGI, especially i came here for my birthday. The company itself has really really gone down hill, me and the people i went with all agreed that the portion sizes have gotten smaller put still charging the same price or even more (i have nothing to backup that prices have inflated but sesame chicken as a main was ££19.95! I dont remember it being that expensive) i just did not enjoy it at all. Even the diet drinks we're £3.95 each! They have inflated 100%

Service was very slow, atleast it felt slow considering there was hardly any people in the area we sat in, but that is not the waitress fault. She was very lovely and polite.

We ordered 3x lots of sesame strips, 1x vegan strips, cajun pasta and half rack of ribs. The chips had absolutley no flavour at all to the point i couldnt even finish my chips, the sesame strips we're quite chewy to the point again i couldnt finish mine, the person that had the ribs said it was very fatty so again she couldnt finish hers and the pasta had no taste whatsoever, not cajun at all.

So for £139.89 i would recommend to anyone that you go somewhere else, very disapointed and wont be...