Hall & Woodhouse Portishead — Restaurant in England

Went for lunch 9/6/22. Food was awful and way overpriced. Chef apparently was incapable of cooking edible fried eggs. Manageress on duty was unsmiling, unfriendly, unhelpful and had zero customer care skills. She should definitely not be in the post without some serious retraining. We will not be returning and my advice is don’t go there!

As a consequence of the response from H&W below I feel the following should be said. I made no complaint about the waitress who served us so not quite sure why she has been drawn into this. In fact she was very helpful with what she did and tried her best to do what she could in a polite and professional way. The manageress was neither polite nor helpful. She did not apologise but made a sarcastic comment about not being able to guarantee runny eggs! Perhaps H&W should add that as a footnote to their menu! My friend did not want her meal replacing as fresh eggs had been put on her meal. She had chopped the others up so they had no choice. I had hardly touched mine and they had obviously just been blitzed in a microwave to heat, making them hard. Originally they both had nice runny yokes but were as cold as if they had just come out of a fridge. No I didn’t want a different meal, I wanted the meal I had picked off the menu, a simple ham, egg and chips which seemed outside the scope of the supposed chef. Plus we had been sat long enough so why would I want to wait for a third botched attempt to be made. Having the charge removed from the bill for a meal I did not eat does not count as an act of good will. Giving someone something for no charge is an act of good will. I had no direct interactions with other staff about this situation so not quite sure who else could be commenting. I have worked in customer service all my working life at a senior level managing teams and ensuring high quality customer service is delivered at all times. Any staff who did not deliver a high level of customer service were retrained or redeployed! H&W need to get their standards improved across the board. And finally implying that my account of the events is somehow untrue is an indication that management at all levels are sadly lacking customer...

We went to Hall & Woodhouse for a meal with friends last night. Between four of us the bill came to just over £240, which would have been fine had the food and service been good. Service was so slow it was ridiculous, there were 5 or 6 tables in the restaurant for most of the time we were there, the wait for food was around 50 minutes after we ordered. Our main courses were barely average, I then had cheese and biscuits which comprised of four very small pieces of cheese and was supposed to be for two people. The Stilton was brown, other cheeses were dry. At one stage we managed to get a waiters attention to order drinks, he turned to leave after we ordered one and had to be called back to take the rest of the order. One member of waiting staff appeared to go for a break mid-service at around 8:30. The staff were flustered for no reason and gave the impression that they didn’t want to be there and took no pride in their job. I get the impression they just need a job and that’s it. I would expect better service at a McDonald’s. Being local, we’ve visited a number of times over the years, but the last two visits have shown how things have gone downhill. Now I wish we’d checked recent reviews before booking. With other restaurants in the area revamping and improving menus and service etc, Hall & Woodhouse really needs to up its game if they want to keep...

Embarrassingly disappointed. I live near Blandford and opted for H&W in Portishead as that’s where H&W originate from. We walked in at 2045 to order some food and the bartender said he would check to see if the kitchen was still open as they had been quiet. We were able to order. However, the food was so disappointingly bad. The chicken wings tasted like they had been heated up in the microwave and then had barbecue sauce squirted over the top of them. As I got to the end of the dish, I stopped eating them as they were that bad.

For the main course, I ordered a Dorset rack of lamb and received one tiny lamb chop with two bones, some very old and dry peas, asparagus and potatoes. I asked the bartender if this was correct as I had ordered a rack of lamb and he said that is how it comes! On top of this it was £19.95!

There was no offer to resurrect it and no offer to receive money back or a discount. If it wasn’t so late and I wasn’t so tired, I would’ve 100% asked for my money back and left. I will not be recommending or going to a H&W again which is a great shame considering it is my local brewery.

Update: Michael (deputy manager) at Portishead contacted me and has genuinely sought to rectify the issue. Much appreciated and...