Frankie & Benny's — Restaurant in Bristol

Travelled to bristol for the night for a day out shopping, for food and a night out so we reserved a table for 9pm Friday for my friends 30th birthday. We turned up for the reservation where a blonde waitress told us you were closing and she would not seat us (you were open until 10pm) . We explained that we had a reservation so she huffed at us rolled her eyes and sat us down. She then shoved some menus at us told us to be quick the kitchen is closing only for her to dissappear for ages and leave us to flag down another waitress to ask for the lunch menu. This other waitress named Eilise was an absolute angel she was polite, friendly and if not for her kindness getting us extra menus and taking our drink order we would have walked out. The blonde waitress comes back to our table with the attitude of a sulky teenager tell us " I need to take your orders what do you want, quickly" she takes our orders (does not write anything down just repeats back what we said and walks away). She comes back with our starters and serves our vegetarian birthday girl potato skins with bacon (birthday girl ordered the just cheese potatoe skins). This is not a problem we explaine she's a vegetarian and had ordered the cheese not the bacon ones. The blonde waitress huffs at us and takes them back to kitchen muttering under her breath at us. At this point the blonde waitress has turned away a numerous amount of people wanting to come into the restaurant saying they are closing when they are not, she also upsets a few other customers at the restaurant who have also complained about her attitude and rudeness. The manager notices her bad attitude and I think he must have sent her home early as she left and any new customers who were coming in were now seated (not turned away like the blonde did) Elise then comes over explains she will be serving us the rest of the night.Eilise is the only reason this review is 5 stars as she was AMAZING!! She went above and beyond for us. The beginning of dinner was ruined and the birthday girl hated every second and just wanted to leave, by the end she was laughing and having a great time all because of your staff member Eilise she treated us like royalty she was so polite, happy and just generally a absolute delight to be around. This 5 star rating is purely because of her and the wonderful person she is. I hope she gets the recognition she deserves as she is an absolute credit to your company and we would 100% come back just to see her. Thank you so much Eilise for making my friends birthday. We were probably some random group you served that night but to us you made the trip and all night we kept mentioning how lovely you were and how much you made my...

Unfortunately this is one of the review with 0 positive things to say. I wish I could say something good but I really have none. Today we went here around 13:15 for lunch. I had a £10 voucher for 2 mains via my phone provider and I haven't been to Frankie & Benny's before but wanted to try it out. My partner has been there before when he was younger and always remembered it being not that great. So he basically told me to not expect too much of it. We ordered 2 x milkshake (1 vanilla and 1 strawberry). They were £4,50 each and the milkshakes were half milkshake and literally the other half of the glass was cream. So you pay half milkshake and half cream for £4,50. I ordered the Chicken Burger with Halloumi. I had to take all the chicken out because it was way overcooked and almost not possible to chew. At least the Halloumi and the bun was edible. The chips were served hot which was good. My partner ordered the vegan burger which was ok. He ordered it with extra cheese but the cheese was hard and plain and not melted at all. The service? Nothing special. I think the manager was the guy with a white shirt on. He took our plates and asked us how the food was, I wanted to tell him about the chicken but before I opened my mouth he already left... I think even the manager does not care much about feedback from customers, especially when he saw all the chicken on my plate I did not finish. I really was wondering what kind of people would choose and come at this place. The total bill was almost £40 (!!) but we had the £10 for 2 main course so only paid £20 something. I was so shocked about the price if you had to pay the FULL PRICE for basically plain not-edible food and poor service. I never really write long reviews like this but this was such a new "interesting and shocking" experience for me... I had...

Worst. Service. Ever.

Admittedly there was a large group of us (19) but we had phoned ahead and booked a table to the staff knew we were coming and honestly we expected such a big chain restaurant to be able to deal with large bookings.

When we arrived the waitress was rude and impatient. She was pushing us to order before the whole party had arrived. We agreed to order drinks while we were waiting. The drinks took half an hour to arrive and that was only after someone from the group went to find out what was happening.

After ordering our food, which was a very rushed and uncomfortable experience due to the waitresses impatience, we then had to wait another 45 minutes for it to arrive.

When the food finally arrived it was awful. The portions were absolutely tiny and overall of really bad quality. I had ordered the vegan burger which was the most pathetic thing I have ever seen. The actually burger was thin and burnt to a crisp. I sent it back showing the waitress that it was burned. She came back a few minutes later from the kitchen and told me that the burger is cooked from frozen so for it to be safe to consume it needs to be cooked to high temperature. Therefore, if they cooked me another burger it would also be burned.

So after a 45 minute wait I was left without a meal at all because the chefs and Frankie and Benny's are so incompetent that they can't even cook their food to an edible standard.

The whole meal was a disaster for the whole party, we all left annoyed and...