TGI Fridays - Bluewater — Restaurant in Dartford

What a Drama! Customer service & manners of certain staff members is appalling.

We booked 2 tables for a party of 9 online, we previously called ahead to secure a slot but was told they couldn’t guarantee we will be sitting together as Saturdays are busy, somewhat defeating the purpose of booking ahead? Whoever took my phone called answered with “Yeah…..?” Unprofessional and in general an unpleasant way to deal with inital customer contact but let’s ignore that as That’s but a drop in the ocean compared to the turn out.

Upon arrival we were greeted by a slightly older woman who orchestrated the seating arrangements, we were lead in to realise we would be sitting on opposite sides of the walkway a few tables apart which wasn’t ideal for our small Bday gathering, we noted that a group of 4 teenage girls were just seated perhaps 60 seconds prior our entry & seated directly besides the one of allocated booths, they were yet to order any food so we politely asked if they would be happy to do a seat swap so we can enjoy our party together, they were more than happy to oblige and after a few pleasantries and laughs we were swapping seats, as a token of gratitude my mum was going to pay for their round of drinks but we didn’t get that far…

Unfortunately the woman from the front of the house ran over in a frenzy asking “what’s going on, have they just told you to get out of your seats!?* sit back down now” and physically ushered them back in to the original seats, she then turned around to myself and 20cm from my face began to talk to me like I was a piece of Sh*t explaining how what has just happened was a crime against the world, the mannerism and attitude she carried is that expected of someone aiming to belittle and intimidate someone…it was a wild Karen in full swing. I’m a rough yet easygoing guy so I don’t offend easily…after a good few min of calmly explaining the trivial & situation which caused no harm to any one in a calm and collective way the onslaught of noise from her mouth and uncomfortably intimate personal space breach pushed my buttons, I told her to get the F out of my face and back up which disappointed me as I do not like to treat people this way but sometime you have to fight fire with fire, this flew right over her head as it just fuelled her for yet more argumentative, intimidating and unpleasant behaviour.

She stated that she moved everyone in the restaurant around just so we could sit near each other which is unbelievable and made out as if our booking was an inconvenience to their company, or we were an excessively large group, we are customers not freeloaders!!!

The manager came out and was as helpful as an ashtray on a motorbike and although not fully aware of the situation carried great hostility and was fired up ready to argue, bear in min we a speaking in a low calm tone still whilst essentially being shouted at.

I genuinely thought this idiotic type of behaviour only existed on random internet videos from America but seeing such illogical power hungry behaviour in my own day to day definitely makes me realise why our nation is going down hill.

We will escalate this to ensure the CCTV footage is reviews and a senior can ensure that the TGI brand is represented in the correct way.

To the woman at the til, do not go in to situations guns blazing, I can see you have a chip on your shoulder but not everyone out here is an A hole or wants to give anyone a hard time, if you took a step back and assessed the situation you would have seen that nothing happened and in fact had you organised your tables correctly we wouldn’t have needed to switch seats, it didn’t require your full steam ahead approach, hospitality may not be your calling.

As you may have gathered we left on our own accord, of to big easy where the food is similar yet double the price however customer service was night and day, we salvaged the night but I’m still left with a sour taste of TGI service innih mouth.

Scott Freeman

Booking...

What a disaster! We were advised there was a 30 minute wait for a table and asked if we would like to seat at the bar for a while which was lovely, bar tender very attentive. 30 minutes passed and our buzzer went off. We went to find a member of staff at reception who were also very helpful and took us to our table. We sat for approximately 15 minutes before we were asked for our drinks order. During this time our waitress was at the dumb waiter drinking her own drink and laughing with other colleagues. Finally took our drinks order, a further 10 minutes passed whilst we waited for our 2 soft drinks. When they arrived our food order was taken with no issues. Our sharing nachos came, clearly the end of a broken packet.. very tight on the dips but lots of tiny, broken nacho crisps which we gave up on trying to eat. A food runner came out with 2 burgers which were not ours, we advised him this was the case to which he returned them to the kitchen. A few minutes later he approached our waitress to query this to which is was quite apparently she had put my other half’s order incorrectly on the till (this was not confirmed by her). The food runner returned to our table a few minutes later to confirm our order which we confirmed to him, he thanked us and left without clearing our table. 15 minutes passed and our waitress returned to advise the kitchen had made an error on the burger and were recooking my other half’s burger and cleared our plate. 15 further minutes passed and a manager bought my partners burger out without mine and explained mine was coming shortly. A few minutes later mine appeared. We were not provided more cutlery from our starters and no more drinks offered. No staff could be found for 5/10 minutes to request more cutlery, we finally caught our waitresses attention whilst she was seeing to the table next to us. She did not ask how our food was so far, both burgers were burnt and over cooked, food was left of our plates when our waitress cleared them to which again we were not asked how the food was nor apologised for the delays and errors. We requested the bill which she fetched and brought back to our table along with our dirty plates she had just taken away. Our bill had 3 burgers on (the two we ordered and the one she put on in error proving this was her error and not the kitchen) we asked her to take this off to which she blamed her manager for not doing so and found him to do so. No discount was offered for the awful service we had received. This is the second terrible experience we have had at TGI’s and unfortunately will not be going to again, such as shame how down hill this has gone, used to be lovely but wouldn’t send my...

First time dinning in TGI's in 7 years.

Very minimal food choices for plant based but I must say what was served was tasty 😋 compliments to the chef as everything tasted nice.

The vegan burger could of done with more sauce or seasoning or vegan mayo, even Jack dan sauce but apart from that the patty was tasty and so was the bun.

Kids meal was nice, food portion of the pasta and chips (weird combo but kids hay).

Disappointed in what was labeled the vegan meatless strips as they actually look like nuggets more then strips, thought there would be breadcrumbs or some texture to it but literally mini nuggets in saracha sauce.

We tried out the 2 for 1 mocktails (non Alcahol cocktail) and really disappointed with what came out. No effort was put into making them at all, looked more like watery orange juice as I couldn't even see the cranberry or the crushed ice, or any fruit in there at all. We sent both back as it was not anywhere near the standards I expected and the replacement was much nicer visually as well as tasted nice.

Away from the food which was decent and what I expected, the place was definitely not clean. At arrival I had to get tissue and clean the seats as my kids wouldn't sit on the dirty sofas. After doing that I did notice the table was not terrible but not well cleaned, the menus are one of my biggest issues as they reflect on the standards in a restaurant and they were definitely not clean, greece and food on them.

Half-way through our meal, a woman got the Hoover out and started hoovering for 5 min near by, I had to check the time as I thought they were cleaning to close. Then realised new guests were still arriving. Very strange to get a hoover out when people are eating and could of very easily done the same job with a dust pan and brush.

Service was good, the young girls who served us was polite, the young lad who changed our drinks was also good and prompt. At arrival and older member of staff went to check of they had the burgers we wanted in stock before we sat down, so all in all very good service.

Toilets in side were clean but one thing that did annoy me a little was all the bits of tissue going up the stairs on the way to the toilets, how did no one notice and bother to clean this up.

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Overall summary is... Food - good Service - good Hygiene - not a clean place but food and cutlery clean

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We would probably not eat here again. Over £100 spent on our meal but for me the hygiene just was not...