Waterside Inn — Restaurant in England

Me and my Girlfriend decided to return to the Waterside inn after 2 years. The place used to be perfect for bar food, outshining much of the competition.

However this visit left us appalled. What has happened here? The whole experience was a bit miserable and if I had paid much more I would have asked for my money back.

To begin with we were met with the "Host" who didn't seat us, or tell us how to order. Eager to eat we figured out it was easy to do through the app. The restaurant itself lacked a floor presence and I had to bombard the poor bar lady with my questions.

Returning to the table, the only service we received was when our food and drinks came, which we ordered through the App. So staff contact was minimal which made it difficult to give any feedback or voice the many issues we had with our meals.

The food has unfortunately slipped since our last visit when the menu was still fairly new. Some changes have been made but much is the same. The Wing's were no where near as good as before. Our "loaded fries" was just a bowel of chunky chips, chicken nuggets and a dribble of nacho sauce. This was described as "A large portion of chips topped with Louisiana-style chicken strips, sweet chilli sauce, nacho cheese sauce and pico de gallo" on the menu but when we got it it was missing the sweet chilli sauce, pico de gallo and the chicken was just chicken nuggets. We asked where they were and received a ramekin sweet chilli sauce. I still don't know what Pico de gallo is but it sounds lovely and apparently I ate a bowel of it today.

We also ordered 2 rounds of drinks, each took 10 minutes to finally get to our table even with a barely half full restaurant. The second round should have came with water, because we were so dehydrated as a result of waiting so long for the first round, only we didn't get our water. Waiting 15 minutes before mentioning it to a passing staff member the response we got was "Well, well, well" which got some laughs because it was exactly what we were expecting at that point. Not even an apology, you are lucky I didn't ask for my money back there and then.

In summary we were excited to come back here but left very disappointed, without any further interaction with the staff, to find somewhere less deflating to spend date night. We won't be back. Hopefully you can learn from this feedback as this was one of my top spots to pig out a couple years ago. Bit of a shame standards have slipped to council estate dining levels. But you get what you pay for I suppose. £2.40 for a half of tap water and a 15 minute wait to keep you on edge. 2...

I visited here with my mother in law on a Tuesday lunchtime, we were first through the door. There was a new member of staff who although still learning was very professional, the lady teaching him was also professional. there were a few niggles that I had, I ordered a coke with no ice and was served a glass with coke up to an inch and a bit from the top, as a consumer I want a full glass so i don't feel ripped off if thats what I’m paying for so smaller glasses and lower price or topping up would have helped get this review a 5 star. I was told its preset and stock control but customer satisfaction should be more important than stock control - no point in having stock if you have no customers...right?

The menu is great for meat eaters, with challenges on massive plates of food and so many great sounding dishes to choose from.

The toilet doors need a clean, so does the ladies restroom, as I said we were first through the doors so I would have expected the loo seats and sinks to be clean, there was a dubious brown smear on the tiles by the mirror.

We had surf n turf on the £7 pound offer (or £7.99) cant remember, which was good value for money but the menu could state that ‘going xl’ doesn’t work with that deal - or add a bit more money to allow it?

Steak was well cooked and tasty, I liked the lemon sauce and the chips were good too, a small amount of the chicken I had was a bit glassy looking/weirdly squishy when eating it (like it wasn't quite cooked enough or had defrosted and not got to temperature when being reheated) - but I ate it anyway and not been ill so all good in my book! Scampi was lush.

Decor and layout was great - would suit families and big groups there are a few hide away spaces for people who don't like big crowds. Some booths are reserved for 5 or more which I understand when its busy but when its quiet they should be available to anyone in my opinion.

Outside seating options are plentiful although next to a main road so can be loud.

My mother in law questioned why it was only ‘mens’ programmes on the many TV screens... target audience I guess but here’s an opportunity for greene kings to make a statement and have one screen showing gender neutral or stereotypically female shows.

Overall a fair experience, I would probably visit again but it's not in my top...

AVOID. AVOID. AVOID.

Visited tonight with family (6 adults & a dog) we ordered quite a bit of food - I think totalling around maybe £150 for the table, and wasn’t at all impressed.

We ordered 16 chicken wings and upon receiving them, there were only 12. There isn’t even an option to order 12 so unsure why we were served 12.

Myself and my partner ordered the Flamin’ bbq meat sharer and upon receiving this, we noticed we were missing a corn on the cob, the mac and cheese was like wallpaper paste and didn’t move at all, even when tipping it upside down - so we notified our server who we thought she was quite abrupt.. we started eating our meal while waiting for the missing items and it was all cold, so I asked to speak to a manager.

Unfortunately I didn’t get her name - but she had a tongue piercing and she was absolutely amazing. She couldn’t have done more for us. She took the meal back, refunded us, made the kitchen remake our food and told us that there would be a free desert for everyone in our party.

Anyway, we got our replacement meal and it was evident every aspect of the meal had microwaved everything to make sure it was hot and that we couldn’t complain as our corn was like plastic (I used to work in a competitors kitchen, I know how stroppy the microwave technicians get ((because they’re hardly chefs)) when someone complains) but it shows in the quality of their food that they send out to paying customers that the level of professionalism and pride they have in their work severely lacks when if they did their job correctly the first time round there wouldn’t be any need to complain.

There was a lad there with long hair who I also unfortunately didn’t get the name of, who was also amazing with us. I asked him to get me a manager and he wasn’t even in our section but checked back more than our actual server did and made sure we were alright and that we were sorted.

We opted to refuse the offer of the free desert as we didn’t want to be seen to have been taking the p*ss when we had a refund and our...