TGI Fridays - London Stratford City — Restaurant in London

I asked my daughter where she wanted to go for her birthday and with delight written all over her face, she said, “T.G.I’s”. Now our experience at this restaurant was far from delightful, absolutely dreadful is much more fitting!

We arrived at the restaurant five minutes before our reservation time to avoid any cues. When we got to the counter, we were stood there for 12 minutes, there were about 8 members of staff, talking in groups, some arguing, some standing around. Two having a huge row right in front of us about who was supposed to be greeting customers at the front. We looked on in horror and asked my daughter if she wanted to go somewhere else, but she was adamant, it had to be T.G.I’s. So we waited an additional few minutes, before I got restless and approached a member of staff, she explained that they were understaffed and the lady who was supposed to be greeting guests had disappeared.

We were finally seated, waited an additional 25 minutes before our waiter arrived at the table, he explained he had just started his shift and was unsure why they were seating people in our section as no one was on shift to take it. He apologised and explained he could take our order but was unable to put it through because his card was not working, he got another waiter whose card was also not working.

The ladies on the opposite table had asked how long we had been waiting, we explained it had been almost an hour and we’d not even had a drink water. They got up and left, we saw other diners get up and leave throughput our duration.

At this point it had all got too much so we called for a manager, the manager came over explaining they were understaffed and as I looked around, there was plenty of staff, they were busy chatting, joking or arguing. It was all very strange, it appeared, they hadn’t a care in the world. He apologised and said things are really tricky but he’ll try to speed things up. This never happened, he instead joined the others in a conversation, laughing and joking.

Our waiter, bless him, he really was trying his best and appeared to be the only person actually working!

Our drinks came, they were lovely, couldn’t fault them.

The food on the other hand, not the quality I’d come to expect at T.G.I’s, they forgot to put the sesame seeds on our sesame strips, and there were several items missing from our ultimate grill like the corn ribs which we were looking forward to trying, cherry tomatoes and the slaw.

Service was slow and just terrible. You could not pay me to come back here! One of my worst dining out...

Decent food, but absolutely dreadful service. The Texan platter (steak & ribs) is served stacked on a slate slab, which is not very practical to eat off because there’s no space; it should be served on a large plate with actual cutting space. Also, no steak knife was given, which made it even harder to eat combined with lack of space on the slab. Our food was brought out all together, we would’ve preferred our starters with our drinks. When our food was brought out, we hadn’t been given any cutlery and had to ask 4 different servers - we ended up waiting 5-10 minutes after we got our food for cutlery, in which time our food had started getting cold. The cutlery should’ve been put on the table as soon as we were seated/before the food was brought out. There was a hair in one of the cocktails so we had to send it back. We also ordered a Bloody Mary, which is usually served with some celery in it, so we asked the waiter if they had celery but they said they don’t, but later we noticed there was celery on the side of the boneless wings, so they lied. The purple rain cocktail had way too much ice in it; finished it in about 5 sips. Service was generally awful; was impossible to get anyones attention. No one came to check on us at all after the food had been brought out. There should be spare napkins on the centre of the table, as some of the starters (E.g. wings) get your hands messy. Took about 20 minutes after we finished eating to get a waiters attention to clear our table, also didn’t bring us dessert menus until we asked twice. I mentioned in the booking that it was my mums 60th birthday and informed our waiter on arrival, but they forgot and didn’t do the TGI’s birthday song for her. After she had finished her dessert, we told our waitress that they had forgotten her birthday, and they ended up bringing out another dessert and singing for her, which was the only bit of good service we had all night. Food wise, the highlights were the boneless hot wings, the sesame chicken bites and the chocolate fudge temptation cake. I would not come back here unless there was no other options, because the service is...

We booked a table here ahead of time on a Thursday evening. Upon arrival, even though there were many free tables, we were seated directly in between two other diners, which felt unnecessary and awkward. The spotlights on the ceiling were aligned in a way that they would shine directly in your face if sat in the booth seat, so my autistic partner asked me if we could swap seats, lol.

From the moment we sat down, it was clear that the restaurant was chronically understaffed. We waited an unreasonably long time for our order to be taken, not because the waiter was inattentive, but because he was the only person taking orders for the whole restaurant.

Due to the time it was taking to have the waiter attend, I tried to use the online drinks ordering system via the QR code on the table. Unfortunately when I tried to tap the "add" button for each item, nothing would happen, so this was a bust.

We did not receive drinks for at least 15 minutes, when they eventually came just after the food. One of the cocktails was not what we had ordered but it was nice anyway so we went with it. When our food was brought out (which I will admit was tasty), we did not have any cutlery. Another staff member brought this over a minute afterwards but just dumped it in a pile on the table for us to sort ourselves.

The waiter was attentive and friendly but perhaps a little too much, he managed to find a way to touch my partner on every interaction we had with him and it made her feel a little uncomfortable.

When we were ready to leave, the wait for the bill was almost as long as the food. Finally, I tried to use the loyalty app on my phone to scan the receipt barcode and claim points, but as I scanned the barcode the app crashed.

The music choice in the restaurant was good and was not too loud. We made use of a "free dessert with a main" offer from their loyalty app which was nice.

However, overall, this was a disappointing and disorganised experience. We ended up being late for our film due to the time we spent waiting. There are too many good restaurants in the area to spend time or...