The Beehive — Restaurant in Cheltenham

It's such a shame to write this but I wanted to warn people of the Christmas Day disaster we and many people experienced this year to potentially save other families for next year. We were a party of 9 and there were lots of other large parties there as well, we first spoke with the Beehive back in June / July to book the table. Told them we had X amount of meat eaters, vegetarians and a Vegan coming, no problem at all the restaurant said they can do a vegan pie and the vegan person can choose their own starter & desert, great! We put everyone's pre-orders in back in October and again were told everything was available and what the vegan had chosen for starter & desert was no problem. On the day we were waiting 45mins for our "arrival" drinks and canapés, the drink was Prosecco with no alternative for the 60% non drinkers at the table. We were told there were vegetarian canapés but the waitress couldn't tell us what they were so the mystery food went untouched and there was no vegan option. It was 1hr 30mins until our starters came which were very nice (soup, pate and scallops) and we all devoured every bite! Around 45mins later the manager came to tell us the vegan pie they ordered is not actually vegan, they had only found out after another vegan diner had asked to see the ingredients list and they realised the pie was not vegan, clearly they had not done their own research when ordering the dish. Vegan diner was offered sausages as an alternative but unfortunately these were soy based sausages which she could not eat due to dietary restrictions. We had been there for 2.5hours and there was no communication on when our food would be coming out. We had to find someone to tell them that if the food did not come out soon then we would have to leave to find alternative food as we had a type 1 diabetic in the party who had already injected their insulin when the starters came so they were on a deadline to eat or this person would become seriously ill. When the food did arrive one plate was sent back immediately as everything was cold, another went back as it had the wrong potatoes on (dietary requirement noted in the pre-order email), the other plates people ate what they could stomach but it was not good. The vegetarian option was advertised as a mushroom, spinach & blue cheese wellington but it was an individual pie, the only thing I could taste was pepper and the pastry was unbelievably soggy. The baby leeks on my plate had brown dirt grains still in there from where they had clearly not been stripped / cleaned before cooking. We all left after our mains without our deserts as we had been there for over three hours and we all had other plans to get to and pets we had to get home for. We also had to find an open store to get more food for the diabetic urgently. I noted that other tables were making the same complaints whilst we were there and two tables even left and came back with their dogs. We did ask the table behind us that were there when we arrived, they had just been served their deserts after being there for four hours. This was our first time dining out for Christmas Day and we certainly won't be doing it again, we thought it would be worth the price of 80 pounds per person to have a stress free dinner but it was...

📅 We have visited a few times for drinks, book ahead to avoid disappointment.

🏠 Faux- trendy, just bland grey paint, clean venue, not a bad place for a pint, lacks any real soul.

🧍🏻‍♀️ Service is great from 99% of the staff, the manager is very loud and quite brash.

🍔 The main meals are not very good and as such extremely over-priced. Food is very inconsistent, stick to the appetizers and nibbles which are actually fairly good.

🍺 A well stocked pub. No complaints, a good place to catch up over a pint.

🅿️ Paid on street parking nearby but very difficult to get a spot. Walk if you can.

🏧 Food seems pricey due to quality but everything else is well priced.

Overall nothing too special about the Beehive but nothing too...

What a bad experience, prepare yourself for an overly long wait for food/drink at lunchtimes (despite the inexperienced bar staff member disagreeing with you on your wait time!) While queueing, I was then expected to further wait because someone rang the pub's landline and the one person behind the bar actually broke off to answer it! Beehive - employ people who have a clue. My colleagues eventually were served their food (fish and chips), hard to screw up yet despite the wait, the fish was still raw. Refund was offered but I won't be going back...