Pavilion Restaurant — Restaurant in Colchester

My husband and I visited the Pavillion for the first time for my birthday very recently. We arrived to be greeted by a young lady whom we were informed that it was her first shift. From our perspective she dealt with us in a friendly way, however, the trainer????? decided it wasn't good enough and had to go through a role play session and do it again. The restuarant at 7.45pm wasn't overly busy, around half a dozen tables in use, we get seated between two other sets of people and it felt like we were sitting on top of one another. The waitress came over to take drinks order and I hadn't even looked at the menu. We ordered water for the table, a glass of prosecco and then the waitress went and didn't even ask if my husband wanted a drink. We ordered some starters and we hadn't even finished them and our plates were being taken away. WTAF? Main dishes came out, once we had finished and let our food go down, we waited at least 25 minutes and we asked for the bill. We didn't get asked if we would like desserts or more drinks.....nothing. Waited a bit longer, no bill. Asked another member of staff for the bill, waited again, nothing. Third time, I asked for the bill of which I am getting a bit peed off. The original waitress came over and said "can I help you"? Yes, i would like the bill. It was then eventually paid. Service charge is added to bill and no choice but to pay which I feel they didn't deserve after what we paid. Overall, the food was very good, the setting was also very nice but the atmosphere was strange and some of the staff are not attentive enough. The whole outing was WEIRD and WE WON'T be...

In the end my birthday evening was amazing and the girl with the pink hair was unreal with her service on the night so thank you. However, being completely honest from start to finish I was made to feel unimportant, I was spoken to rudely and felt like you really only wanted to take my money. I was messed about so much when I booked in back in march. Promised that paper work was going to be sent over and it wasn’t, chasing constantly to make payment and even making serval calls in just being ignored. The only reason I ended up still proceeding was down to the venue it’s self and I had been many times before and the foods been amazing. Your events team really need to learn customer service as a lot of time and effort goes into planning an event and I spent most of mine being angry or upset with your staff to the point I was in tears. When asked to speak to a manger this was shut down and refused also. On the night it’s self our waitress was AMAZING! She was polite and nothing was too much! The DJ was terrible!! I was told that we could play our own music if we wanted to in the gallery but then there was no lead to do this which was upsetting. So the whole evening we listened to what seemed to be the same beat over and over. Food was amazing as always, but in all honestly I wouldn’t ever do another function at your premises. Which is a shame as I’m a regular at the pavilion. I hope these comments are taken on board and kept in mind with other events you host...

Our meal was just awful. It was my boyfriends birthday and I was so hopeful it would be an amazing meal for him as you are such a popular place, but it was one of the worst we’ve had in a while.

We ordered prawn toast for starter which was greasy and we both couldn’t swallow our first bite, we sent that back to the kitchen. Secondly, we ordered prawn skewers, these were lukewarm at best and mushy? I have never tasted prawns like that before. Next, we ordered fish tacos which were about as bland as toast, I was really shocked and disappointed with this dish especially, we again had one bite and sent them back to the kitchen. This is not the standard we expect of such an expensive restaurant.

We ordered dragon roll, which was delicious and very well done. I then decided to treat my partner to wagyu steak as he has always wanted to try this, however on arrival it was covered in some kind of soy sauce? Which was not mentioned on the menu and again, completely ruined our £47 steak?!

We ordered a bottle of champagne of which was probably the nicest thing we had, however the waitress then knocked a full glass over and didn’t offer a new clean glass or even a refill. We then asked to speak to the manager of whom was very dismissive of eveything and said all off our food was batch cooked and “nobody else” complained. We got £7 off our bill and lots of horrible stares for the rest of the night.

Will never return and will spread the word about this...