Nags Head Brentwood — Restaurant in Brentwood

We have visited the Nags Head many times over the years and on the whole, it’s been a pleasant experience.

Yesterday, however, was rather more disappointing.

We decided to pop in, as a couple, on the off chance for a last minute birthday meal for my wife. it was 2pm on a cold wet Monday, so our hopes were high of nabbing a table, if not in the restaurant, then maybe in the bar. As it turned out the former was rather busy, so we were offered the latter, which was all good. We have eaten a few times in the bar area, so know the menu and service is just the same.

The man that greeted us, gave us our menus, said we could choose our table and that someone would be with us shortly… We picked out our food and dinks and sat there trying to catch someone’s eye to order…… We gave it 10-15 minutes, so I decided that as they may be busy, I’d get the drinks myself from the bar and ask if maybe we should order our food there also. The barman was very polite and very clear. Her poured our drinks, opened a tab on the card machine and said he would kindly bring the drinks over and that “someone would be over to take our food order shortly”. The drinks arrived but we sat for another 30 minutes with menus in front of us and no one asked us if we were ready to order, or indeed needed any help……

The bar are emptied over the time we waited. The restaurant area also emptied mostly. we were the only people in the bar area for a good while, all the time watching staff cleaning and clearing tables, collecting buckets of ice and generally doing ANYTHING other than acknowledge their paying customers.

Strange….

My wife decided she would also see if we could place our food order at the bar, as we were now quite hungry. To our surprise, she was greeted with a “yes! we only take food orders at the bar, we ALWAYS have”. Obviously, this was a lie, as not only had I been told the opposite a good while earlier, we’ve eaten in the bar area on a few occasions and received good service at the table.

My wife called me to the bar and I asked the barman why he’d told me to sit down and wait at the table for someone to take our order. He then lied, he said they’ve only ever taken orders at the bar and that he DIDN’T say someone would come over to take our order. He looked me in the eye and lied.

I paid for the drinks, we left and we ate at the Greyhound in Warley. We sat in the bar area and received excellent service. After the Nags Head, quite frankly, the Queen Vic on Christmas day would’ve been a more enjoyable and customer friendly experience!

For clarity, The Nags Head bar area HASN’T ALWAYS only taken food orders at the bar. Some customers have obviously been visiting this pub for a longer time than the staff that are currently employed. If this is now the current policy, brilliant! I personally prefer it, it means not waiting around trying to get someone’s attention. Also there were numerous occasions to pass on this policy information. When we were first seated. When i actually tried to order food at the bar. When we were sat there for 45 minutes in a rapidly emptying bar, with menus in front of us, staring at waiting staff like extras from Oliver. Put a note on menus? (bar area patrons please order at the bar) Put a sign in the bar noting the same.

It was an extremely shabby, shoddy and tardy experience in what used to be a ‘nice pub’.

I’m not sure if it’s under new management, or just that staff training has lapsed over the years, but the Nags Head is not what it was sadly.

Please, anyone thinking of frequenting the Nags Head, if there’s nowhere else available, i’d suggest a nice sandwich at home would be a more rewarding experience. If not, ANY other pub around that area would leave you with a better customer experience.

Until there is a change of management and staff I won’t be returning and will be advising everyone I know to avoid in future.

Shame really but best to avoid for the...

We've not had great service at this restaurant a few times, but the location is convenient and the food is excellent so we put up with less-than-perfect. However, the last experience has really put us off returning. On arrival we ordered drinks, and waited roughly ten minutes, but our whole party had not arrived at the same time so we were happy to be patient. We waited another ten minutes to be able to order, and then our starters finally arrived roughly 40 minutes after we sat down.

Another 30 minutes later, our main courses still hadn't arrived and no one had even been to our table to let us know or to offer more drinks. Finally we got the attention of our server who told us "they had to clean down the whole grill because of your dairy allergy", which not only sounded like they were telling us it was our fault, but also shouldn't take that long for a single dish.

Finally, we received our mains after 90 minutes at the table, and all were delicious apart from one meal which was different to the ordered meal. This was rectified, and although the new steak was somewhat undercooked, it was enjoyed. During this time we had also ordered another bottle of wine, and this took around 15 minutes to be delivered somewhat impatiently by a bartender.

We opted against desserts even though we had planned to have them, because by this time we'd been at the restaurant for 2.5 hours and we didn't want to wait indefinitely for another course.

I understand that things go wrong and that sometimes tables have to wait. I've worked in service myself along with my sister who was also present, and we're very tolerant of genuine problems and errors. However, on this occasion, we felt that the service provided both by our server and by the front of house management in the restaurant in general were appalling. Our server took to actively avoiding us, visiting only the other tables in the section unless we specifically called out to her, and at no point did a restaurant manager visit our table to acknowledge our wait and/or offer a round of drinks or something for our patience. At the end we approached our server to request some sort of compensation and only then were offered a discount by the elusive manager, who we still didn't see personally.

We live less than a mile away and would continue to be regular customers but some training for front of house staff particularly management is absolutely vital. A quick visit from the FOH manager for any table waiting longer than usual is a basic industry standard and should be the default, and any experienced server knows that if you keep visiting your table and doing what you can to at least keep their drinks topped up, you'll keep them on side. I hope we see better if...

We arrived for 315. Our table was booked for 330. I let the lady behind the bar know that we were here but we were waiting for a couple as they were stuck in traffic. She wasn’t bothered. She looked like she’d been slapped in the face and didn’t want to be there. When the rest of our party arrived, we sat ourselves down at our table as we weren’t shown to our table, we weren’t asked if we wanted drinks so we had to ask someone if we can order drinks the chap that took our drinks order also couldn’t really be bothered to be there waiting staff looked totally miserable. Our food was pre-ordered from a pre-order form that took ages to arrive. overall the food was okay. The waiting staff were terrible. Not once were we asked if our food was okay we were left sitting there again with empty glasses and had to ask If we could have more drinks. The drinks were on the bar for about 10 minutes to the point, my husband went up to get our own drinks from the bar. I wouldn’t have minded if it was absolutely chockablock busy, but it wasn’t the waiting staff could not be bothered . .They had the cheek to put a £60 service charge on our bill. If it wasn’t for the family being there I would’ve refused to pay this as we had no service. We will not be returning to this place again and I will not be recommending to any of my friends and family terrible service if you don’t want to work in a pub get a...