The Lyme Bay — Restaurant in England

Extremely nice location let down by incredibly poor service. I'm not someone who generally leaves reviews but felt compelled to leave feedback after our experience today.

Incredibly inattentive staff. This place is missing a trick, you could be serving your customers so much better and making more money at the same time.

Here's what happened.

We were seated and ordered drinks. When the drinks arrived, we asked (the bearded guy) if we could order our food. Totally normal.

"No" was the response, but someone will be with you soon. Waited 20 minutes, tried endlessly to get a waitress' attention. Finally did. "Can we order our mains please?"

"No, sorry, there are 5 people in front of you". WHAT?

We waited a further 20 minutes to order food. Then 50 minutes for the food to arrive.

Not once were we asked. How was your food? Would you like another drink? Can I get you something?

There was no follow up. What a missed opportunity?

yes, the restaurant was busy, but the reality is that the waiting staff are clearly poorly trained and poorly managed.

The number of staff walking in and out without paying attention to customers was staggering.

When we finished our meal we tried 5 times to get someone's attention to order some coffees. After 20 minutes or trying, I grabbed the attention of one member of staff by waving. I got a reassuring nod that someone was coming over.

We thought, great we''re going to get to order our coffee. Then the girl came out with the bill.

Absolutely hopeless!!!

Just train your staff: a) Looks at what is happening. They were all skulking around heads down. b) Pay attention to your customers - who needs something? It take less than 1 minute to take an order c) Walk round and take orders, ask people what they want. Can I get you something else?

You offered less than the bare minimum. You could have sold hundreds of pounds more of drinks today with one small tweak. This alone would pay...

The Lyme Bay’s outstanding ocean views can’t help but draw you to its entrance. You can see the busy kitchen at the front and can immediately see they take their coffee and food very seriously. We ordered Fish and Chips, they were everything but ordinary - the chips were rosemary salted, the peas mixed with minty flavours, the batter was crispy, even the tartare sauce was freshly prepared. As far as the food goes, it’s excellent. Unfortunately the cafe is let down by its inexperienced serving staff. We were sat down and given menus but it was a long time before anyone asked us what drinks we wanted. The person who took our drink order couldn’t however take our food order - it seemed there were only a few who could, which meant more waiting until that person was available. Eventually I managed to make eye contact with them and they came over.

Staff were generally difficult to summon - which is frustrating, when you want to order something or request your bill. They didn’t seem to notice when glasses were empty and missed the chance to ask whether we wanted another. I saw a customer’s sweater fall from their chair, then watched two staff members carefully stepping over it, before a more senior staff member had the initiative to pick it up.

The Lyme Bay needs to realise that it’s great food is only half of the experience and should put more time into training it’s waiting staff to look for opportunities - customers don’t like waiting any longer than necessary, especially if there’s a problem. We would have liked to have been in and out within say 45 mins, for two pints and two fish and chips I’d think that was reasonable, but we were there for 90 mins. Much of that was spent waiting...

I went to Lyme Bay with a group of four other friends. We arrived and the staff member at the door said 'Do you mind if I don't wear a mask' - which took me by surprise as we were all wearing masks, other customers we saw were wearing masks and workers in other cafes and restaurants in Lyme Regis were wearing masks. We went in anyway as the café was airy and well ventilated and we wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. We sat down and were looking at the menu - you had to order on your phone which was good. We were still wearing our masks as we had just sat down. A man who I presume to be the owner came over, without a mask, and leaned over to my friend. He was about ten centimeters away from my friends face and said 'Just so you know - you can take your mask off at the table'. It was too close for comfort, unhygienic and irresponsible. After ordering at the table using their website, we then had to go to the bar to collect our own drinks. The government guidance and regulations state that "in venues which sell alcohol, food and drink must be ordered by, and served to, customers who are seated". It should have been 100% table service, but in this bar it wasn't and nobody explained why. The music was also very loud. We did not finish our drinks before leaving as the whole experience was quite unpleasant. There was a young waitress who was really lovely and was wearing a mask. But the other staff didn't appear to take Coronavirus seriously, and I did not feel it was a comfortable experience...