Ye Olde Whyte Harte — Restaurant in Eastleigh

Fawlty Towers'esque; comedy gold.

Dropped in here on Friday evening having watched the Hants vs Essex T20 game @ Ageas Bowl in the afternoon.

The rear beer garden is a really nice spot, the range of beers was good and the food the 3 of us ordered was all pretty good.

However, the service was a shambles, so poor that in the end it actually became really funny waiting to see what they got wrong next. We had everything from a pile of plates being cleared from a nearby table being dropped and shattering at our feet, to having the wrong drinks delivered for each of the two rounds that we ordered (after waiting about 20 mins for the second round to turn up) but the highlight was reserved for an elderly couple seated near to us. They had been seated for over half an hour before having to get up to ask if someone could actually take their order. Profuse apologies were offered and eventually the pub's version of Fawlty Towers' Manuel was sent out to remedy the situation. He turned up and produced the bottle of red wine that the couple had been waiting to order with a flourish, only to realise that the bottle he had brought out for them had already been opened and was already half empty. Cue more grovelling apologies as 'Manuel' beat an embarrassed and hasty retreat much to the couples bemusement.

We may have just got them on a bad night, or perhaps they are only slowly getting back up to speed following the lockdowns, but if it's polished service you're after you'll need to look...

Starters were lovely. Mains we’re absolutely shocking. I had fish pie, was terribly dry, I had to send it back for lack of flavour. My partner had the pork belly, the meat itself was cooked well, the potatoes had no flavour whatsoever. My sons cheese burger was overwhelmingly seasoned with pepper, was tingling my tongue for 10mins after. When I approached the waitress to explain how the food was and especially my 12 year old sons burger, I walked away in private to tell her so not in front of the other guests, she said she would report back. I then herd the female manager from the bar say “she just wants free food”. I herd this and went to the bar to say that we don’t want free food, they just should make it clear on the menu that it has a lot of pepper in. To which she opened the kitchen door and told the chef to tell me, to which he replied yes there was a lot of pepper in it. We go out for dinner quiet a lot and don’t expect to be spoken to like that especially from the landlady of an establishment. Although the main meals were not great, I have come away appalled by the level of customer service. I have never been spoken to like that in my life. The rudest experience of my life. When the bill was brought she then slammed it on table and walked off....

I’m so shocked at my experience at this establishment. Wasn’t very busy in restaurant section but was a little at the bar. The bar seemed more important than the restaurant side as service was a little slow. As for the food not great. Dry is the word the sums up our 4 different dish choices. Now if one of the four was slightly dry I would put it down to a bad dish it can happen, but for all four to be dry isn’t a great advert for this establishments food. One meal was so bad it had to be sent back. Once we had eaten all we could we have some feed back to our server when she reported it back to what I guess was the landlady we were accused of trying to get free food. I was shocked at this as not once had we asked for anything to be removed from the bill. The landlady’s attitude from that point was absolutely disgusting rude and abrupt in front of my children and other customers was that bad she cost her young waitress a tip. This seems like a great little venue maybe add some flavour to your food and some customer service lessons needed. Would never recommend...