Hall & Woodhouse Taplow — Restaurant in England

This was to have been a special evening - a birthday celebration for me. My friend and I had been to the restaurant before, with a group, and really liked the design, the space, the ambience, the parking etc..etc.. and were really looking forward to returning. The staff were friendly, welcoming and attentive and I had it in mind that it might become a special place for the two of us as it was reasonably convenient for us to access. Sadly, I don't think that this is going to be the case and the ONLY reason why it won't become our special place is because of the one thing I have so far left out in my review: the really poor food. I don't know if any of the management have actually eaten at the H&W Taplow recently but if they did, they would be as disappointed as I was.

I couldn't say anything about my food to my friend Tom as he had insisted on paying so that it was a treat for me and I certainly didn't want to cause a scene or seem to be ungrateful so I kept quiet. I did notice that he left some of his fish and chips which must have meant that he hadn't enjoyed his food either. Who leaves fish and chips? It must be the simplest dish to cook to perfection if you know what you are doing.

The starter was fine and tasty and the puddings were great but the main attraction for me, the salmon dish, was truly dreadful. The salmon itself was overcooked, the carrots limp and I found it almost impossible to cut through either the leeks or the sprouting broccoli. To think that my friend had to pay £17.95 or whatever it was for that meal for me makes me despair. Neither of us minds paying for a meal out but what we were served on Monday evening was really a disgrace.

I can't understand why a company that has put so much thought and imagination into designing such a beautiful venue for diners doesn't then keep a strict eye on the quality of the main attraction: the food. It's the reason why we all of us want to go out - to have someone cook a really nice meal for us, one that is at least as good if not a whole lot better than we could cook at home. I regularly cook salmon for myself and my friends at home, and broccoli, and my version would have knocked spots off the one I had to eat on Monday. In fact I would have been ashamed to have served that meal to anyone.

You need to monitor the standard of the food at the H&W Taplow much more strictly. You really need to employ someone like me to go for a meal, from time to time, anonymously, in order to report back on standards. At the very least, you owe my friend Tom and I a complimentary meal, especially as this was supposed to be my birthday celebration. I doubt if we would...

We decided to book to give you a second chance as we came 2 years ago when you first opened and had a dreadful evening. We put it down to teething problems, having just opened so thought you may have got it together by now. This time, sadly it was no different. On arrival there was no one there to greet us. We stood by the check in desk for a good 5 minutes, ignored by all passing staff, before I then managed to catch a waitress who told us to wait at the desk and someone would come. When they did, we were told that our table wasn't ready as it needed to be cleaned, so we waited another 5-10 minutes just all 6 of us just standing in the middle of the restaurant. Once sat down we were told that one of the fryers was down so there were no fish/seafood products that evening. We had looked at the menu before arriving and chosen what we wanted to make it quicker getting our order in. My children were all particularly looking forward to calamari and other fish dishes and as they are quite fussy, this then caused us a challenge, having to choose other starters and mains. We ordered drinks straight away which took 30 minutes to come and our starters took an hour. During this hour wait, we were not approached by staff at all and ended up going to the bar ourselves for more rounds of drinks at least twice. When I took my daughter to the toilet, there was only 1 cubicle with toilet paper available. A lady we met in there said she had told staff over an hour before that most of the cubicles needed paper but it had not been replaced. Some of the food was ok, nothing outstanding and some was awful, particularly my kids hot dogs with burnt buns on the outside and soggy in the middle like they had had water dripped into them. We decided to leave after our main course and go elsewhere for dessert. The waitress who brought our bill over was surprised we were not happy and made an excuse that 2 members of staff had gone home sick; not enough to cause the very poor service received that evening. It's such a shame that you can't get it together as it is a beautiful setting on the river. Yes it was a sunny evening and packed with drinkers and all the tables full, but you don't seem to be able to manage such a huge restaurant. We will not...

This was the worst meal of my entire life. Everything that could possibly go wrong did so I will list everything from start to finish.

Wasn’t greeted when entered the restaurant Barman tried to perform some kind of “show” by pouring our tonics into the gin glass which resulted in the whole drink tasting purely of tonic A whole camembert tray was dropped onto my lap After the replacement camembert was brought out it wasn’t cooked and hard in the middle Had to wait 15-20 minutes for our starters to be cleared Then had to wait 45 minutes for our main courses (the restaurant was not busy) We could see the staff trying to close down the kitchen and clean it before we had even got our meal Tables around us who had ordered after us received their meals well before us Food came out and 2 of my friends ordered the chicken and bacon salad, their plates were half empty and looked like half of the meal had already been eaten, there was the smallest amount of chicken on the plate, the croutons were soggy My burger bun was stale and hard and the chips were so dry and powdery inside My other friends’ ravioli was drowned in oil and only tasted of oil A side of mac and cheese looked like a budget ready meal and came out in a clump and the pasta was very over cooked

The whole time that all of this was going on staff were very aware that we weren’t happy and we could see the waiters/waitresses were alerting the managers and trying to help us but the managers did not care at all, they were going round the rest of the restaurant asking how people’s meals were but ignored us every-time they walked past us.

Then at the end it took us 15 minutes for our payments to be taken as staff hadn’t been trained to know how to use the till properly (all while this was going on a fire alarm of some kind was going off for about 5 minutes).

The manager had to come over to help sort out our payment and didn’t say a word to us or offer any apology in the slightest.

Was a horrible meal, which is a shame as many friends and family asked me to let them know how it was but I have told them all not to bother and my friends and I certainly won’t...