The Lifeboat — Restaurant in England

We have been visiting the Isle of Wight for a few days away as a couple before Christmas and I had researched a couple of nice places to eat including a visit to the Lifeboat.

Based on the other google reviews I had read, we were excited for a great experience. Unfortunately the Lifeboat didn’t live up to its reviews.

Our server didn’t seem very interested in us at all, we had pre-ordered our food (as requested when we booked) but that seemed to mean the server regarded that their job was already done.

The largest concern was the lack of any confirmation or interest in my wife’s allergy’s. I had listed them on the pre-order but along with the lack of concern we were shown throughout our visit we decided it would be safest to skip dessert as it was the most likely course to contain nuts.

When we informed the team at the lifeboat of this it seemed to completely blow their minds. The concept that a customer might not want a dessert after awful service didn’t seem to register with them.

It was made clear to us, many times, by a manager that we would be required to pay for the deserts even if we didn’t eat them.

To be honest, this review was always going to be written based on our experience, but it was going to be 3 Star - the managers confrontational reaction has dropped it to a 2 Star review. Another customer may have even found the managers remarks inflammatory rather than mitigative.

We appreciate that everyone has an off day, but our legitimate concerns about the lack of care and attention shown by the Lifeboat to its patrons during our visit fell on completely deaf ears.

I think this all goes to show that the food is just one part of a visit to a restaurant, and that the experience side of things is as important, if not more so.

To finish it all off, the server in question and the manager then ignored us themselves and sent over a young lad who had nothing to do with the situation up until now to actually take our payment - we had to ask him the names of the server and manager as neither had introduced themselves to us at any time (Server: Nicky & Manager: Cheryl)

Credit to him, he tried his best to apologise for the situation (more than the manager did) and he promised that on our return we would have a better experience.

After spending a £20 deposit and a further £40 on the check, at this moment I cannot fathom a reason why we would choose to return.

I should also say that two adjacent tables to us also complained during our visit…

Pros:

The starters were nice, my wife especially enjoyed her gyozas. The overall restaurant is very nicely done. The car park and restaurant are very accessible. In an attempt at mitigation our drinks were taken off...

We dined there on Sunday, 10th April 2022, and we were really looking forward to the meal, as we had read nice reviews about you. We’re big foodies from London, so good food always excites us.

The location is fantastic. The atmosphere in the restaurant was chatty and buzzing, so we were happy to have come to this restaurant. The menu also looked lovely, so we ordered our dishes. The staff was good, and the customer service was good as well. Not exceptional, though.

Once the food arrived for the 6 of us – 2 of our dishes were great, i.e., the roasted fillet of sea bass with shelled prawns and the sizzling spicy Mexican Fajitas. But apart from that, we were a quite disappointed. 2 x kids ordered Pasta with cheese and Pasta with cheese and Tomato sauce… They were so bland and looked so unappetising. My girls (aged 8 and 6) can cook better Pasta themselves. My husband ordered Penang cauliflower and Pepper curry – that was also quite bland, and my husband did not enjoy it at all. And considering all that, it was quite pricey. But the worst was, when my daughter ordered dessert – when she ordered Jelly Squeeze – she thought she would be getting a nice restaurant made jelly… BUT our minds went numb, when the waitress came in and handed her a pouch, (which is normally served to babies)… Our family are foodies, and never in my life, have we been given a pouch for a dessert, not even in small cafes… We didn’t know what to say. These pouches are available at all supermarkets for 0.80p, so if they charged us 80p, I might still have accepted it… but they had the guts to charge £2.25 for that… I was left shocked. My sister-in-law was kind enough to leave a huge tip, despite all this.

So, all in all, we left the restaurant quite disappointed… and don’t think we would return again, when visiting the Isle of...

I hate writing bad reviews for hospitality venues because I myself know what it is like working under pressure of peak summer in a tourist town. However the service was utterly terrible when I visited the Lifeboat last night for my friend's 20th.

I ordered a 'ginless tonic' which, according to their menu, should have come with strawberries, raspberries, and blackcurrents- yet it came as a disappointment, plain with a chunk of lemon squeezed inside. For the price of the drink, I was upset that it didn't come as described. When I brought this problem to the barmaid she seemed irritated by my request to sort this out and acted as if I was bothering her, saying the barman was 'new' as if I was annoyed by the issue and needed an explanation. She did add the berries into the original drink and I apologised for any inconvenience.

This would've been fine however my food order was also then made incorrectly and when I raised an issue the waitress took back my meal and after ten minutes brought it back out, again wrong. After all this waiting around I didn't want to make a fuss and seem like an annoyance so I ate it and did really enjoy the food! However my order was still wrong and I even paid extra for this! I was very disappointed by my experience at the Lifeboat and would advise them to listen to their customers properly in future. I expected my meal to be at the least discounted, or rather on the house, for the inconvenience and mess ups!

Again, so sorry to leave such a rant but the service was very disappointing. The waiting staff seemed very young and I didn't want to place any blame on those...