Harvester Horse & Groom Sidcup — Restaurant in London

This is probably the most comprehensive feedback you will read.

I had a craving for Scampi today and I thought of the Harvester chain where I last dined over 3 years ago. I was visiting my friend in Kent and as we were in the locality, he suggested this specific establishment. When we arrived around 13:45 , the car park was nice and empty so we were spoilt for choice of parking space. We parked and entered the restaurant. We were greated by a charming lady who walked us past the salad bar to our seating area. On the way we walked past a set of stairs going up, with dramatic sunlight coming through. I commented on it and she said she had worked there 20+ years and she had never had a comment about the stairs before, She will no doubt look at it in a different light going forward.

We were seated at nice table, although the space behind me, due to a wall being there, was a little cramped whilst sitting at the chair. Also the very large chunky leg of the tab;e restricted where I could place my legs, that was a bit uncomfortable.

We quickly glanced through the menu and chose 2 courses as well as hot drinks We caught the eye of a server and ordered our meal.

My Latte and my friends Green tea were served first. The flavour of the latte was nice, but the glass was a little on the small size.

We then walked to the salad bar to help ourselves as has been the custom at harvester.

Something very novel followed. 2 servers appeared, one went with my friend and the other with me. She picked up a bowl and went along the salad bar asking me what I wanted and then placed them in a bowl, all topped up with thousand island dressing and crispy onions. She offered me a choice of rolls but did not ask if i wanted margarine or butter, I was served margarine. She then placed a quarter plate below my salad bowl and off I went to our table. I carried a bottle of the NAGA sauce, for those amongst you who like a kick to their food. The salad station was very short of sweetcorn and it lacked variety. There used to be a lot larger choice of items when I last visited a harverter such as Red kidney Beans, Jalapenos and red onions. Perhaps sign of the times.

The salad was tasty and we both enjoyed it , all but my favourite potato salad, which I had the most of. Unfortunaely I left all of it as the potatoes were too hard and part uncooked, photo attached.

The main course arrived , really nicely presented on a rectangular plate with the chips, peas, and the tartar sauce placed in separate dishes, that is always a good thing to see. I squeezed the lemon on a scampi one at a time as I ate them. This mantains the crispness.

The scampi was superb, without any unpleasant smell and the taste flawless, took me back. It was cooked to perfection. The chips were nice too. I thoroughly enjoyed them both, the only let down were the peas, they were vary hard and part cooked, so I did not consume them. My friend took it off me, well he eats anything...........

The server cleared our plates and brought our deserts , the Sundae best. I had asked the server to be generous with the chocolate dressing and she was . The sundae came in a tall glass , full to the brim, topped up the a icecream cone, reminiscent of a hat. The icecream was very smooth and the sauce tasty, my friend did comment as he was expecting some fruit as it was a sundae

I am glad we did not order 3 courses as that would have been too much, we made the correct choice.

The server took the payment at the table including the tip, that was nice.

As we exited I managed to get a photo of the stairswith the dramatic sunlight entering from the top right corner of the window, very arty.

This was a very pleasant outing , and we realy enjoyed the experience. Thank you ladies.

Please do address the issues I have raised. You will then definety get the...

I recently visited Harvester Sidcup with my family, Our booking was for a table of ten at 7:30 pm. What a terrible experience.

Upon our arrival at 7:29 pm, we were seated upstairs around 7:33 pm. Unfortunately, the service started poorly, as our waitress did not approach us for 15 minutes. We had to prompt her to take our orders, during which we informed her about our Groupon vouchers. I don’t think she was too happy that we were using vouchers. She mentioned that it will have to be done as separate orders which would result in staggered meal times, potentially taking 40 minutes to an hour and a half for each meal. Its not our first time eating at harvester or using vouchers so we knew this to be untrue, however she left to consult her manager about using the vouchers and then failed to return to the table to let us know if the vouchers will be accepted.

After 10 minutes or so we noticed that she had returned back upstairs, but had proceeded to attended to other tables, and this also included seating another group and then returning to them to take their order. We were confused as she made no attempt to address the matter we had previously discussed so we were left not knowing what was happening. Frustrated, two members of our party spoke to the deputy manager, who confirmed we could use the vouchers for the entire table and confirmed that she had said this to her colleague over 15 mins prior to us going down to ask what was happening. We then requested another member of staff help us with our order, and the deputy manager assured us another staff member would serve us, things started to be better, but that was so short lived and to be honest we should have just left!!

Second Incident

Unfortunately, when our food began arriving, the initial waitress came back to attend to us and aggressively placed the dishes in front of our family she then rudely shouted loudly if we were okay with our food, This behaviour was inappropriate and disruptive.

Third Incident

After our meal, while waiting for dessert, the waitress started slamming cutlery into a draw behind our table, it was repeated continuously and was loud and aggressive in her behaviour this was particularly distressing for a party member with autism and sensory issues. Unable to tolerate the hostile environment, we decided to cancel our dessert order. A member of our party went downstairs to request the cancellation, and we spoke with the manager about our experience. Despite the managers apologies, the poor service had already ruined the birthday celebration.

We left without receiving the service we paid for and were left with a deeply disappointing experience. We addressed this with management and also feel that it’s important that an accurate review of an experience is shared.

The food wasn’t great at all, I’ve shared the pics of the food. I would’ve also shared videos of the woman’s mannerism but have left it out for this review.

Yeah such an annoying and...

All I can say is that the so called manager (DILLAN) is an absolute disgrace! If that is even his name. I have seen a similar review already on here stating the manager is called David so god knows what his real name is. Tall, long manbun hair, scruffy looking and spoke to us like complete idiots! We had an issue regarding vouchers with one being a complimentary drink from the app and the other being a bluelight card. We was told at the beginning to scan our vouchers at the end so we did. Our food order was around 40mins and mine came out wrong so I had to wait another 15mins to which everyone else had finished when mine arrived. I didn't complain as we don't usually have a issue here. At the end we asked for the bill and we reminded them of our vouchers to then be told we could only use 1 of them. If they had told us this at first we wouldn't of used the drink voucher. So we had to pay £12 for the so called complementary drinks which was a G&T and a beer. We only ordered these as they were (complimentary). We asked to speak to the manager as we didn't see how it was fair. He then came over with an attitude, begain to talk down to us like we were children standing right next to our daughter and was told we should of checked the T&C's it's not his problem and that he wouldn't be removing the drinks from our bill. He then walked off to the bar, started to mutter and talking to himself and I had heard him basically moaning about us, to which I couldn't really bite my tongue any longer and I confronted him to which he mumbled I'm talking to a staff member. (the man was standing alone). How on earth this guy is left incharge of a restaurant is beyond me, even the poor barmaid Gemma was extremely apologetic and apologising for how he has spoken to us. Our daughter got extremely upset by how the manager (Dillan/David) was carrying on and kept talking over my wife and kept using words like love, darling which is an insult in itself, that isn't professional nor how a manager should speak to customer's. I asked for a email address from them for headover and when I was given one from them it didn't exist. I did find the correct one myself and a email has already been send to head office to deal with this matter correctly, I hope! We will not be returning to Sidcup Harvester the whole time this manager is in charge of it. Really disappointed in this as it did not need to escalate to the...