The Millfield Beefeater — Restaurant in England

Staying in the premier inn next door to the beefeater, reserved a table at the main reception and the response from the lady at the desk was as if we were asking her to move a mountain, seemed to be too much of an effort for her to actually do something instead of gauping out of the window. We arrived to be seated and were only told about the meal deal after we had already paid for our breakfasts at the main reception. We booked a table for four people and got seated at a table which was just big enough for two. Sunlight was glaring through the window and a lady sitting in the window seat kindly offered to shut the blind, the blind did not shut completely, so sunlight was still blinding half the table, causing us to duck just to see the menus. As there wasn’t enough space at the table for four people we had to take it turns to open the rather wide menus to choose our meals. We politely asked our server if we could move to a different table where we weren’t being blinded by sunlight, also hoping for larger table, she kindly moved us although still to the same sized table. 30 minutes later she took our drink orders and explained she would be back in a minute to take our meal orders, another 15 minutes passed and she returned with out drinks and to take our meal orders, we waited an hour for our meals to arrive, 3 our of 4 arrived and the waitress explained that the chicken burger ordered got mixed up (ordered without cheese and they’d put cheese on it) so they were getting a new one. We asked for ketchup and mayo and again waited 5 or so minutes before one of got up to find some sauces (our meals were sitting there and we were waiting to begin but couldn’t because of the lack of condiments) finally the 4th meal arrived, food was average. However the chicken burger was very dry and over cooked. Whilst waiting for various things to arrive we overheard a man ask twice for his beer even though his starter had been served, eaten and cleared before his beer arrived! Would not eat here again, very slow service and staff seemed to be extremely busy as if...

Very disappointing prepaid meal as part of away break. Decided as a rare treat to upgrade to the steak with prawns and calamari. The steak requested medium (I'm tolerant of pub medium being anything from bloody though to barely a hint of red) It arrived with a steak knife which was the only way it could be sawn through - seriously over cooked to the point it was dry as a bone, I wonder if it maybe was even a re-griddled old steak.

We arrived to a quiet restaurant at 5pm but had a reservation for 6pm. We were advised that due to staff shortages we couldn't be seated before our allotted time so had drinks in the bar.

Once seated we asked for water to go with the consumed drinks and food . We asked three more times over the first hour but it didn't arrive - eventually the starters for those having them did, so I went and got water myself.

The evening meal took just over 4 hours and I left without having eaten as I'd been saving myself for my steak/ prawns/ calamari special. One prawn split in two and a couple of tiny bits of Calamari aren't a meal worth over £20.

We did raise the inedible steak and were told another could be cooked. Having waited two hours to get the first one and the others had eaten so we didn't want to wait any longer.

The receipt for the meal took over an hour, the system crashed! When the robotic was everything okay came out we said no the steak was inedible - which had already been acknowledged as embarrassing by the waitress when she took it away just cut through and not touched. It was mentioned something might be able to be with the receipt, nothing was.

After 4 hours waiting around we decided to use beefeaters own feedback system to say something isn't right here. They auto acknowledged our comments and then nothing - no simple human apology 'We were very understaffed' or 'we've put process in place to remind staff to check meals are okay during the dining process' So I'm writing this review thoroughly disappointed that this must be what Beefeater now accept as a standard...

Visited here today (Saturday afternoon) with a group of 8, restaurant was very quiet. We were not warmly greeted, even though we pre booked our table weeks in advance, there was no table setup and ready for us, the waiter had to pull two tables together and we waited awkwardly for him to set it up.

The service we received was absolutely shocking all the way from the start to the end. After we finished our starters, we waited 30 mins before we saw any waiting staff, the next staff we saw was delivering our main courses, our guests had to move our own plates to a nearby empty table as the main course turned up. We were waiting 40 mins for a drinks order to arrive, so had to go to the bar to get our drinks as we weee halfway through our main course by now. Then I was told at the bar our bottle of wine was out of stock, which was the reason we hadn’t had the drinks yet! The lady behind the bar didn’t know what wine was, the staff admitted they didn’t know how to make mocktails, so they hoped it tasted nice (it didn’t!)… very poor communication, staff were the worse I have ever encountered in any restaurant, ever (and that is saying something!)

The restaurant was so quiet, I could understand some of these problems if they were short staffed or up against it, but there were no excuses today.

No one checked up on us during any courses, no one asked if the meal was ok. The deserts were a joke too…

The waiting staff knew we were not happy with the service today and offered us to have our deserts for free to accommodate for the poor service, but they couldn’t even get that right as they left the bottle of wine we didn’t receive on the bill. We pointed it out and had it removed.

I haven’t even written several other things that happened, just embarrassing.

I wouldn’t even say this place deserves one star!

Will not...