Miller & Carter Beaconsfield — Restaurant in England

Seriously unimpressed from our visit on New Year’s Eve. We had booked a table for NYE at 9pm, when we arrived to an almost completely empty restaurant other than 2 other tables we were told our table wasn’t ready and to wait in the bar whilst our table was being prepared. After waiting in the bar we were sat at our table and our order was taken. The only 2 other tables in the whole restaurant were also sat near by us. The rest of the restaurant was completely empty and there were dirty tables everywhere you looked.

Starters were fine but nothing to write home about. Then before our mains came out, this is where everything started to go downhill. We were supposed to have a glass of Prosecco on arrival which we didn’t get until I had to ask the waiter 45 minutes into our meal. Our first round of drinks came out in good time but our second round of drinks took almost 20 minutes to arrive and after having to go to the bar to get them we were told that they had been sat ready for us for at least the last 10 minutes and the waiter just hadn’t brought them to us. At this point there was only one other table in the restaurant so it’s not like they were busy. We ordered 1 ribeye and 1 fillet off the NYE set menu. My partners ribeye came out absolutely fine but the waiter tried to give me a sirloin. I reminded him that I had ordered a fillet and he went back off to the kitchen to sort this out. I was then told on multiple occasions that my fillet was being cooked and it would only be a few minutes. 15 minutes later my partner still hadn’t had his chips and I still hadn’t had my fillet. A few minutes after this Reese (who I couldn’t praise anymore if I tried) came to tell me that they had actually run out of fillets and that they were sorting me out a replacement Fillet mignon instead. (Hence why they had tried to palm me off with a sirloin thinking I wouldn’t notice the difference) both steaks were lovely so I can’t complain about that.

We then ordered deserts which was another disaster. There were 5 deserts on the set menu. I ordered the CROQUE-EN-BOUCHE CHEESECAKE and my partner order the chocolate ganache. We were then told 5 mins later that they actually didn’t have either of these options! How can you not have 2/5 set deserts especially as it wasn’t busy at all! Again Reese came to the rescue and sorted out other deserts for us. I would like to thank Reese again for being so helpful and trying to fix the mess of a meal that we had had.

After this I went to go to the closest bathroom to where we were sat near the bar to find them locked with no sign on the door and a horrid putrid smell from the general area. I went to the toilets in the back of the restaurant and walked past all of the dirty tables that still hadn’t been cleaned from when we arrived.

I certainly won’t be coming back to the Beaconsfield location which is a 5 minute walk from my house. Instead I could happily choose to drive the extra 15-20 minutes to the Taplow location which has always been great and never had a problem with. Hugely disappointed is an...

Service: Our waitress Lana was ace, she really kept her cool despite how busy the restaurant was and handled the mix-up on my steak with ease and professionalism. The manager dealt with another table that seemed to be being rude quite well but more on that below.

Food: We had the prawn salad and beef croquettes as a starter which I though was okay but in retrospect should have gone for the glazed chicken. Had a mouthful of my partners prawn which tasted a little bland maybe but she enjoyed it so maybe the but I had a bad selection.

I ordered my steak rare and my partner medium rare, I don't know what happened but seemed like a mixup in the kitchen and they came the other way round, all flavour lost on my 50 day ahead Mignon. Not normally one to request food be re-made but I would have been disappointed if I ate that and then paid for the privilege but Lana was accommodating and relatively quickly had a new steak cooked which was delicious. If anything, I'd say this steak was Blue but that actually was better for me and I really enjoyed it. The meat was tender, succulent and juicy, possibly not for everyone's taste but accompanied by the beef dripping sauce was an amazing flavour profile.

I think the Wedge salad was a little superfluous maybe and noticed a lot of people had left them, I could certainly have done without it and possibly had room for a dessert having not eaten it which seemed like a prerequisite for our steak to arrive.

Drink: I had a french 75 to start which was initially a bit too bitter but once I'd squeezed the (interesting way to garnish a F75) lemon slice into it, was delicious.

We always like to sample the house wine and found this one to be a tasty medium bodied red wine, with a suspicious lack of origin or information around production but did state that it 'goes well with steak' which luckily, was true!

Vibe/Decor: There's been a refurb & rebrand since I was last here and it looks better but I could still see a few bits that could be touched up. Certainly going for a slightly classier tone but falling slightly short, this could well be down the some of the patrons and their behaviour. The table behind us from my understanding had some issues with the food/order but they way they were talking to the staff was unnecessary and rude. Especially considering they'd been ordering soft drinks and cheekily adding vodka from a plastic bottle under the table but hey, we're in a cost of living crisis so who am I to judge? They did however come across as the type of people that might do this regardless. The manager seemingly kept his cool while dealing with them so...

Very disappointing visit this evening. Firstly waited quite a while to be seated, service was incredibly slow whilst waiting to order drinks and food. The waitress made mistakes and added our order to someone else's bill, luckily another waitress realised.

Menu descriptions of meals were wrong, or so we were told by the waitress who did check with the chefs.

The starters were sat under heat lamps for over 5 minutes (we could see the kitchen from where we were sat) the bao buns were so hard they couldn't be eaten, this was rectified quite quickly.

Ours mains came, we ordered 2x ribs and a butchers block & extra ribs... When the butchers block finally arrived after being sat under the heat lamps for well over 5 minutes, the steaks were cold. I was able to physically put my finger through the steaks (these were sent back) and the chef placed the same steaks back on the grill (Cross contamination at its finest) chefs response when I asked "have you put the same steaks back on the grill" Chef "what you want a fresh one? That'll be over 30 minutes" at this point I asked for the manager. *all this time our other 2 meals were waiting to come over *

After well over 10 minutes the ribs were brought over.

We spoke with the manager who apologised and said he would speak to the chefs (but it made no difference as we continued to watch the chefs whilst the other meals were eaten)

One of the chefs was also eating in the kitchen in full sight of the guests.

I remember when this restaurant was a lovely place to go, and the food was amazing.

Such a shame since the old management team have left the quality has decreased so much.

The restaurant was also not the cleanest, the cutlery and glasses were still dirty.

Would definitely not recommend this restaurant anymore, extremely...