TGI Fridays - Crawley — Restaurant in Crawley

Very disappointed with our visit yesterday 11th July 2020 5:30pm at the crawley branch. completely understand we are in a pandemic but our service was awful. after 4months of both having to work through these hard times we just wanted to enjoy a nice meal out.

Firstly we arrrive and are waiting 20mins to even get to the lady at the entrance to then overhear that our table has been given away to someone else. so finally seated 30minutes after our book in time.

Lady who served us came over took our drinks order and food order to be told no draugh beer only bottles due to covid-19 but all pubs and other restaurants have been able to supply draugh beer so makes no sense. ask for corona extra dont have it, ask for peroni dont have it so left left with the option of budwiser and Heineken.

our starter comes out 30minutes after ordering it but the lady who brought it to the table just put it on then ran away no cutlery to use at all so my partner had to get up ask for cutlery and 5minutes later the cutlery arrives and food wasnt so hot anymore but ate it anyway.

starter plate gets taken away we order more drinks so we had a full drink to have with our main meal 10-15mins later main meal comes out but no drinks but start to eat. main meal was lovely finished eating no drinks still... partner goes to the toilet to then see on someone elses table they are drinking corona (was told they didnt have any) when the waitress comes over to check if the food was okay by this time we finished 5minutes before hand we explain that we havent received our drinks still she goes to check turns out she didnt even put the drinks order through takes our drinks order again by this point we just order 1 beer and 1 water as we knew we was going to be in there much longer and didnt want to have go rush our drinks and we also questioned as to why another customer has the drink they said they didnt have she goes off askes and comes back to say they found a box in the fridge at the back and happily swaps the bud for the corona which makes me question if theyve just found a box at the back of a fridge has it been sitting there for 4months since before the pandemic.

just observing around the restaurant to not seen much cleaning going on to prevent the spread of infection considering the restaurant was half full due to social distancing.

definitely got better service when the restaurant was packed.

go to pay for our meal ask if they have military discount and they explain that they do not do discount for anyone including military and nhs workers but hey ho, pay for our meal sit there finish our drinks and leave a tip anyway as after the current events that have been going on we know that some people are really relying on tips from customers as part of their income.

My partner and i just slightly brushed everything under the carpet as we are greatful to be able to go out and get something to eat until this morning when we was speaking to family about our meal and then realising that we ordered an extra side to share with our meal and didnt receive it.

next time we fancy a night off from cooking we will not even consider TGIF as an option would rather go to mcdonalds drive through and take it...

Absolutely disgusting food and as for the service from the manager well what can I say ! That manager should not be in charge of any company whatsoever. Completely burnt loaded skins and I mean really burnt ! Hardly any bacon and not much potato left due to the overcooking. Nearly £40.00 for a mixed grill and that was also over cooked and very burnt which gave the food a really tainted burnt flavour which was revolting. The steak was really anaemic with no flavour whatsoever and extremely dry with no blood/juice from it. The ribs had no flavour either as they did not seem to have any barbecue type sauce coating. Asked the Waitress for some more barbecue sauce and she totally forgot, so we never got that either! I had to get up and go to the kitchen as The waiter and waitress had completely disappeared for quite some time in the kitchen and nowhere to be seen when we required some service so Ii had to go and call out for some service so we could get another drink. The chicken was chewy and dry and all very very bland with not much flavour. We both had a very small amount of the main meal to then Realise that what we were eating was absolutely flavourless and disgusting. We sent the food back and I Refused to pay for any of it apart from our drinks. When I complained to the manager and quite politely at first he was extremely arrogant. We felt like he was basically disbelieving us that his food was really bad and he had a very smug and arrogant attitude and did not offer any apology whatsoever until I requested that he apologises to us. His response was well. I can’t make you pay for it can I so there’s not much I can do!! His response to us as a really unhappy customer was Appalling and it was obvious that he did not care whatsoever. A complete waste of a journey go to this place and ruined our Saturday lunch that we were looking forward too and the manager did not even offer anything as a goodwill to return in the future but instead he got a bill for £25.00 for 2 colas that were not real coke that he said it was ( so they are mis selling a product that is not what they say it is … Coke coca) and for 2 cocktails that we don’t believe even had a drop of alcohol in it! I was furious at this charge especially when it said out the front on a board that cocktails were £5.00 and also 2 for the price of 1 !!! Complete rip off TGIs are after Having a similar experience over six years ago at the Crawley restaurant we decided to not return there up until today when we thought we would give it another try after six years but it was even worse than last time so we will never ever be returning to this restaurant chain again. I will be complaining to TGIs head office about the Quality of food at this restaurant and about the service from...

I'm really disappointed that I need to write this review because we love TGIs - the food and drinks are great.

Unfortunately we were trying to order food for click and collect... The first problem I had was when we had a question about the menu so I tried to call the restaurant. It took multiple call attempts over about half an hour before I could get through to someone.

I then placed the order online about 2 hours before collection, giving plenty of time to prepare the food. I arrived about 15 minutes after the time I had entered online, giving the restaurant even more time to prepare.

When I arrived nobody came to the waiting area at the door, another customer even told me "just go in, nobody is coming to seat people". It was still quite early in the evening at this point and the restaurant was almost empty.

When I eventually tracked down a member of staff they seemed confused about my order. They went to get another member of staff (a manager?) who asked to see my order confirmation, they went away again before coming back and saying the food hadn't been prepared and it would be another 5-10 minutes...

Finally after all this time to prepare the food I picked up the order and the paper bag they gave me ripped almost instantly while I was still in the restaurant. No replacement was offered.

I think we'll be back at some point, probably to eat in rather than get takeaway. For the price of the food the service we received was really really poor which is a shame for one of our favourite restaurants... While the food is still great it seems like the customer service has sadly gone downhill recently.

UPDATE - We went back to TGIs and unfortunately the customer service was still not great. We decided to eat in this time and the food was fantastic. Sadly this was let down by having to wait at the entrance for 10-15 minutes with a long queue behind us while the staff were visible inside chatting to each other or just waiting around. They clearly saw the queue at the door but ignored it and continued to chat. When we were finally let in the member of staff said that they need to check if a table was available for us (this was at about 5pm and the restaurant was almost empty with free tables everywhere). We were seated at a table which was dirty and there was used tissue paper on my chair which I had to remove. After that the service was fairly good at the table but had already been let down by a few easily...