Harvester Griffin Taunton — Restaurant in England

We have not visited this restaurant for many years and decided this was the day to go, we noticed on arrival the many many parking warning signs scatered around which suggests free parking and barcodes and green signs warns you. We had to wait to be seated which was not that long, but on reading the menu we noticed the cost had increased massively to the point that a common normal chicken burger is priced between £14.99 and £16.99 and yes I know you get to eat tons of salad if you wish from the cart. Sadly for us this is not a restaurant we will ever step foot in again as a family of 4 plus drinks will set you back around £70 of the main menu, the before 1700 menu was ok but nothing special and still that's priced at £11.99. If you are lucky to be wealthy and have spare money to splash out you can afford to eat here but for struggling families, a visit to the local Weatherspoon etc will save you around £45 as we did today this inc drinks and two deserts and we had an outstanding meals and side orders. Its sad as times have changed and I can remember when Harvester was the place for families to go and have a nice evening meal that does not break the bank, but we were shocked at the menu prices and drink are not cheap either unless you all share one refill for 4 family members. We sadly had to leave after seating down for just 8 minutes.

BUT!!! the scam of this place now is the parking, when entering the car park you have to scan a barcode when you are in the hotel or restaurant which gives you free parking up to 4 hours when you are waiting to be seated the bar code is near the till, because we left after just 9 minutes it was very quickly obvious even entering this parking area for 1 minute you have to pay, we viewed the signs and no where did it read you have twenty minutes free tp park etc, so we scanned the barcode at the restaurant and returned to the car to find we had to pay £1 fee for just driving in and driving out,9 mins in total. I tried to find the function on the web browser that allows you free parking for quests at harvester, but it would not allow us so it was either drive out and have an high chance of a £100 fine or pay the £1 for the privilege to park, sit in Harvester and return back to car in just 9 minutes. Total scam!!!! This will be a place we will never return again, times have changed and for many of us money is tight and justifying spending £15 on a burger is not an option. For those that can afford to eat here you will have a great pleasant restaurant which is clean and tidy, BUT!!!! watch out for that parking as i can see now many people having fines of £100 just because they walked/drove in and walked out from this site, yet another parking scam just like...

Experience at Harvester yesterday was simply a JOKE! 2nd visit to this restaurant first time was okay and as it was in the area, so we went again. Bear in mind I’m a national cyclist on his pre British finals day. (I’m obviously going to need good nutrition). We had a table booked for 7pm I was planning to finish eating before 8pm to allow food to digest well. Arrived bang on 7 and someone was already allocated to our reserved table, all other tables were full at the time. We stayed patient and got told as soon as a table was free the staff would seat us there.

Waited half and hour and still no one helped so we helped our self and sat at a free table which wasn’t cleared. Told staff we were ready to order… no one came back and this happened to almost everyone. Everything we wanted we had to beg for such as table to be cleared, cleaned, cutlery given. We were still being patient and respecting their claim that they were short staffed even though I have never seen so many staff in my life.

This is where it was a joke, we placed an order which I don’t even think got noted down anyway as girl lost her tablet. One of the girls was cheeky enough to say “theres a Miller and Carter over the road” then went silent. We eventually got salad bowls after begging again, won’t mention the condition of it. It’s now past 8:15pm still no food it’s too late for me to even eat anything heavy now. Missed out of protein goals some people needed food for diabetic reasons and tables left uncleared everywhere.

I used to work at McDonald’s I know exactly how these staff feels under pressure in busy conditions and they handled it totally wrong! Biggest mistake they did were 1. Not shutting doors to more people coming in they allowed more and more people to come in when they couldn’t cope and 2. Saying “ I’ll be with you in 2 SECS” and come 5 mins later! Trust me all customers hate this phrase as it’s technically lying and I recommend staff are trained to not say this and to fulfill customers demands one by one.

To some up this review I am not the person to hammer a business and I don’t like giving bad reviews but this is a message to Harvester if anything.

1 star for service.

1 star for food (other people told us there’s was dry and discusting) guessing food was sat in a food warmer for ages.

2 stars for atmosphere. Only because it everyone was collectively complaining (as they should) and I try to take humor from things but generally pissed off as I felt weak the next day...

It had been a while since we had treated ourselves to a Haverster. Looking forward we booked a table for 18.15. Upon arriving at 17.55 we were shown to our tables pretty quickly, by a polite young man who explained they were short staffed and very busy. We accepted this and went with the flow. Our orders and drinks were taken within 20 mins and our salad bowls dropped to the table. Upon visiting the salad bar we found it almost completely empty. No lettuce, pasta, peppers. Most trays had little to nothing it. Sauces and toppings empty and nothing but a few hard rolls to offer. We returned to our table with what we could get and awaited it to be refreshed. This took quite awhile but eventually the station was being refreshed. Upon going to the salad bar promptly, it was apparent it must have been like this for quite awhile as it had become insanely busy as everyone scrambled to get some! Somethings remained empty. Our meal began arriving next. Which started off great, until our Last meal to be brought was wrong. My child sat there while the rest of us got started. The meal tasted good but was warm not hot. I was nearly finished when the last meal finally arrived. With it being busy and as they said under staffed, we took a very chilled out approach to all of the above. However upon finishing our meal we noted Alot of tables had finished and left. It was much quieter, so upon clearing the table I requested the dessert menu. This was dropped off to the table. We sat and waited, trying to get the attention of a waiter. 30 minutes later we are fed up of waiting and approach the welcome desk to try and get help so we could pay and leave. Eventually a waitress approaches asking how she can help, we ask to pay and instead of doing so as all others had at their table, we are told you were table 20 go to the bar! The bar has 1 barman trying to serve drinks, so we wait. To later find the waitress making her way to a break, which the bar man actually pointed out how busy he was. She stops and finally rings up our bill. We leave 2 hours after arriving! Just our main meal in that time I was totally accepting of the issues to begin, when they were clearly busy. But we felt totally ignored and little service, when the restaurant was much quieter. We would have spent more money on drinks and desserts. Having visited many harvesters, I'm in no...