The Willy Wicket — Restaurant in England

We visited on Sunday 30th March for Mother's Day. We had previously had a great experience at the Willy Wicket and other Vintage Inns (The Brassmill in Keynsham & The Globe in Saltford), so thought we'd come here for a lovely Mother's Day meal.

We fully expected it to be busy, and would have totally understood a long wait time due to it being busy.

However, our booking was at 17:30. We were not seated until 18:40. We were told that it had been very busy (understandable) and the table wasn't available. We were initially told 30 minutes but that went on for another 40 minutes.

We didn't want Mother's Day to be ruined and didn't want to go elsewhere so we waited. Loads of other families were waiting in the bar area. It wasn't just us affected. The manager who was on the door clearly did not want to be there. A lady tapped him on the shoulder and said "where is our mains? We've been waiting 2 hours". So clearly issues were going on, which affected everyone in the restaurant. We also noticed 2 tables get up and leave as they were fed up of waiting.

Starters took 40 minutes to come out, so we had them around 19:20. The main - roast dinners - did not come out until 20:30 - exactly 3 HOURS after the time our table should have been.

Again, I totally get a longer wait may happen on Mother's Day and we were prepared for that, however... 3 HOURS? Please see the photo of the Roast. It was appalling - not enough on the plate, they were clearly reducing the amount so they could stretch the food out for longer in the day. Everything was very dry, not worth the 3 hour wait. I didn't say anything because the waiting staff were clearly having a stressful time.

Speaking of the waiting staff, they remained friendly, they were clearly doing their best in difficult circumstances. Very apologetic, there was no hesitation for them to give discounts on the bill either.

The issue seemed to be with Management. The manager on the door clearly did not want to be there. He was complaining to customers about how busy it was, not welcoming at all. I witnessed him have a go at one of the members of bar staff - the bar staff and waiting staff were doing their very best. No doubt they'll get the blame by management - when it was clearly them at fault - either having back-to-back bookings or/and not organising table times.

The restaurant looked very presentable and clean. Great place to go for a meal on a normal day, but Mother's Day? Complete and utter shambles. The place clearly needs some new management. It looked like everything was being dealt with badly. Managers should have stopped all bar walk-ins, this would have allowed bar staff to help with bringing food out, the bar area would have been more free for customers to wait for their tables. "Stack it high sell it cheap" is what came to mind. One of the members of staff blamed it on Vintage Inns head office booking lots of people in.

Never again.

If a manager reads this and responds with some text book reply - please don't. You know what it was like that day. You have to admit it...

I usually book to meet up with ex work colleagues and this is a central location. We usually meet up approx 4 times a year and the number usually ranges from 7 to 10 people. Occasionally we may have the odd person whose meal did not meet their expectations , but usually the majority of us have been happy overall. On this occasion however, three of us ordered the beef and red wine pie. It looked delicious on the plate but the meat was very tough and chewy for all of us. We informed the waitress who was very helpful and lovely. She offered to exchange our meals for us. We appreciated the offer but firstly our other diners would have finished theirs by the time our replacement meals would have arrived. It just puts a dampener on the occasion. It was also very sunny and therefore very hot in the restaurant. Whilst it's nice to have the sunshine, we were unable to open the windows and there were no curtains or blinds available to close. We were quite uncomfortably hot. Either you need to put some form of air conditioning or replace the curtains or blinds. The pull chains were in situ but nothing attached to them. Some people moved but more difficult for a table of seven to move elsewhere without splitting the group up which would be unacceptable as this is a get together to catch up with friends. Our desserts were lovely and the cost of the three unsatisfactory meals were not charged for but we have noticed that things have definitely gone downhill. This is no reflection on the waitress who was very attentive. Overall, we gave now decided to try another location for our next get together as we want to be able to all enjoy the food. We did hear afterwards that we were not the first to complain about the pie meat. Hopefully this will be rectified. Perhaps you may need to change...

We've had really good visits to the Willy Wicket in the past but the most recent visit was a major disappointment. Arrived at noon for lunch on a weekday but staff were not ready to receive guests and we had to ask to be seated. When I asked about the lunchtime menu which was advertised online, staff were unable to locate or produce a paper menu for us to look at. Food for 3 people took over 40min to arrive and only after we enquired about it. We were the first table to order that lunchtime but another table was served before us. When I queried this, the supervisor was very abrupt in her response and said this was because we had ordered a steak (I didn't think it took that long to cook a steak, even a well-done one!). She seemed to imply that the delay was our own fault for ordering the steak in the first place but none of the staff had made it clear that the steak would take that long to cook. We had intended to stay for dessert but after being given dessert menus, nobody came back to take our orders so we ended up leaving after paying at the bar (again because there was nobody around to ask for the bill). The supervisor studiously avoided us for the rest of our visit and did not check back in with us at any point afterwards. I submitted a complaint after the visit but there was no apology forthcoming or reassurance that the issues I highlighted would be addressed, only a voucher for £10 which felt a bit like a 'payoff' to keep me quiet. £10 barely covers the price of one main meal! I don't think we'll be back again in the future given our recent experience which is a shame because previous visits have been lovely especially when Charlotte and her team were...