The Gardeners Arms — Restaurant in Mid Sussex

I don’t often leave reviews. My partner and I did not have a good experience today. We have eaten here before and we have enjoyed it. Today we came with our two young boys. We were seated in the far corner of the restaurant which was great. After sitting for 10 minutes we were finally given some menus and offered some drinks. After deciding our food choices we waited for my son’s meal to arrive which unfortunately was luke warm and not only that but there was no offering of any condiments. My partner ordered a chicken salad and my self the chicken burger. We waited for 20 minutes and nothing arrived, within that time a few other tables were seated and they were immediately offered drinks and also shown the specials board but for some reason it was not offered to my self and family. We continued to wait for our food but another 15 minutes went by and no dishes arrived, but some how 2 other customers food arrived within good timing of them being seated which then made us feel like because we had two young children that we were not as important as other guests, they were offered condiments and generally well looked after, I’d like to say our food order was a difficult one but it was truly not, a simple salad and burger. So with that we decided to pay for our drinks and leave. I spoke with a nice gentlemen who was very passionate and apologised but the lady who I can only identify as the restaurant manager was dismissive and did not have time to give a valid reason as to why we were treated differently from the other guests. She point blank ignored me and didn’t even have the decency to stand and speak professionally to someone who has in fact been in the catering industry for 19 years, as a restaurant manager it is your duty to make sure you address any issues with customers as it is extremely important for any business to show a level of respect to your customers and to make sure they return. Extremely disappointed to say the least. We will not be coming back to this establishment which is a shame as we are local in Haywards Heath. We were paying customers and from my experience in the catering industry each customer is as important as the next. I completely understand when things get busy and the team are under pressure that it can be tough, but today I feel that we were most definitely not treated how other guests were treated so for those reasons we left without eating and it spoilt our...

We are going to this pub 2 or 3 x a week , they have changed the menu recently and the food isn't good, it smells and tastes of really bad products . We had beef cheek which was hard and the wine sauce looked like sombody used the plate as a toilet , was gloopy and really not tasty at all . Mash potato's even if they had been real were old , you could really taste it , there were some random blends of puree on the plate 90%of meal.was sweet , if I want a dessert I will order it not having my main meal turn into one , hard Carrots and completely 0 taste and 0 presentation . There is hardly any choice in a menu now, all its either vegetarian or some other weird combination. They used to have lovely lamb and chicken also steak writes but its all gone and it has been replace with vegetarian option or boring alternatives , sausage and mash and other meals which are in every cheep pub !!! What a disappointment as we use to love it ! We have 2 mains and 2 teas and coke and we payed 95£ went home hungry and discussed about the food taste . My husband had they spicy chicken ( use to be a generous portion ) now its look like freshly hatch chicken size of small mouse for 20£ chicken was dry and then put in cold oil and re heated , no taste , no salt no pepper not anything ! Mains was look like size of a starters ! We seriously upset about that horrible not tasteful ...

Having just had Sunday lunch with friends and their dog, I feel compelled to write a review. We booked a table for 4 plus one dog at 12.15 and for the first part of our meal all was well. Our waitress was friendly and the food was generally good. We were in good spirits and our friends’ dog was happily sleeping in the corner next to our table. At 1.50, the manager suddenly approached us and told us quite brusquely that he needed our table and we would need to move to another one. We weren’t very happy about this as we still had 25 minutes of our booking session left and had yet to decide on dessert/ coffee etc. We were about to acquiesce when he then added that it was our fault as we had been late to arrive. This really annoyed us as we had arrived at 12.17( 2 minutes after our 12.15 booking) so we said that we weren’t going to move and would just have our coffees and leave. Instead of apologising to us the manager simply muttered “Rude” at us and went away. It ruined our warm, happy feeling about the place and left us feeling like we had been treated really badly by him. Shocking customer service and not an experience we want to repeat in a hurry! A great shame as it could have been...