Miller & Carter Basingstoke — Restaurant in Basingstoke and Deane

Food is amazing. Some staff less than desired. I hate to write reviews like this when we've had so many positive visits to Miller & Carter in Basingstoke but feel that this has tarnished our impression.

Jade served us for the majority of the evening from start to finish. She was the first point of contact when walking into the restaurant.

Despite booking a table in advance, Jade told us we'd need to wait 10 minutes before we could be seated - no problem we said, we'll get a drink at the bar! What should have been a simple transaction actually translated in to a wait for a drink by bar staff that were trying to do a stock take. 35 minutes later we were being seated almost on the door step of the front door. Both exterior doors left open with it being around 5 degrees outside. You can probably imagine it was cold and with no response from the waitress about it being cold - I took it upon myself to shut the open exterior doors with a look of death from our waitress.

Found Jade to be rude, abrupt and incompetent. Probably best suited to a Harvester or Beefeater where customers aren't paying a premium or are able to understand her care free attitude. When asking for a large white wine - asked if we knew what the house wine was as she didn't and couldn't find it? Really? Then told multiple items were out of stock followed by being told they were in stock. Over long nails which were probably a health hazard. Seemed unable to speak English properly and found her to be beyond patronising.

Regardless - ordered the steak selection - Food arrived quickly, hot and great as usual. Great steak, even better Mac and cheese...but then.. just as we were enjoying our meal to celebrate an important date. It was quickly spoilt by Jade deciding to do the hoovering!!! At half 8... With many other dining guests still eating. Unacceptable.

Edit - to note at this point - the owner has responded to positive reviews since but didn't take the time to respond to ours. Likely because its negative... Guess another case of burying their heads...

I gave this place a five star review 11 months ago... I recently visited and unfortunately I can't even give 0 stars now. Very argumentative waitress when we complained about the wait between food times, no one seemed to know who the manager was, staff sent over the 'manager' later turned out to be just another member of staff, slowest service I've ever experienced despite prebooking a table for 8 of us, took 30 minutes to take our orders, starters took 40 minutes, another 20 minutes after starters they sent out a salad wedge and have to wait 40 minutes for the mains even though we could see they were on the side and actually had to ask the waitress if the food there we could have, the staff have gone REALLY down hill, this was the type of service I would of received when it was a Toby Carvery so I'm not sure if the staff have transferred but honestly the most shocking experience I've ever had, and far from what I'd expected seeing as my visit before was amazing, I'm really not sure what's happened for it to go so down hill... I put in my complaint and none of the issues could be addressed by email and I even attached my phone number and was never contacted. I've read other recent reviews and all the negative ones I can completely relate to, seems to be similar experiences shared and certain patterns... Hopefully the establishment sorts itself out, but as I said, it was the experience I'd of had when it was a Toby carvery except this time I'm paying 4/5 times the price! Probably the worst experience I will ever have in my entire life, you couldn't...

One of our party was gluten and dairy intolerant ... the waiter had to keep checking several times to know which items contained dairy. This was surprising given the limited nature of the set menu.

Also, the only dessert option for our party member from the set menu was the poached pear which was not available, and we weren't aware of this until after the first two courses. This wasn't unavailable due to being sold out, but because the pears were unexpectedly hard, and they were preferring not to serve them.

We opted to take them as they came, yet did need a knife and fork to eat them, but I don't understand why they didn't just warm them up to soften them beforehand. Plus also, it came with an aniseed coulis, which was originally advertised as a berry coulis, and the dairy intolerant guest really can't stand aniseed, so they ended up leaving the pear!

With all the faff around the dessert, it ended the meal on a down note, and it all could have been avoided had we been proactively warned about the pear before we locked ourselves into ordering off the set menu. I was also surprised that there was only one dairy free option off the set menu... even just sorbet ice cream wasn't an official option, though it came as an addition...