Huck's — Restaurant in Newark and Sherwood

Where do I start????

We arrived early to our reservation. We were informed our waiter was Matthew J. We were seated opposite the toilets and next to the door… we were freezing and everyone who entered the restaurant walked past us… We waited 15 to 20 minutes for our waiter to come take our order. He came over with an attitude, as if it was too much for him to take our order (there was 2 couples).

He took our drinks order, neglecting to take out starter order to speed up the process of our stay.

We waited some time for drink to arrive and when they did, it was a different waiter. We then waited some time for our waiter to come take our order. Whilst taking our order he added extras onto our dish’s without informing us of the xtra charge. £3 for a small bowl of chilli…. When asking us if we wanted beef or bean chilli, Matthew became very sassy with our group saying ‘I’m not eating the food, you are. Don’t look at me’. As you can imagine we were took back by his behaviour.

Our starter came pretty quick. However we were told the starter we ordered would be big enough for the four of us. It was big enough to share between 2 people. If we’d have been informed correctly we would have ordered two. Our mains arrived some time later. To say HUCKS is meant to be an American diner, the portion sizes weren’t very American portion sizes. If we had known we’d have had something to eat a few hours before our reservation.

When it came to paying at the end, Matthews entire persona became polar opposite to how he was with us. He informed us about the 7.5% service charge (as a tip) and said we could take it off if we didn’t want it on there. We decided to take it off due to the poor service and waiting time we had experienced. Matthews persona reversed back to how he had been with us prior to brining the bill.

The smile on the recipient he drew was the only smile we received our entire stay at HUCKS.

Food was okay. The price definitely does not reflect the quality or quantity of food. Really overpriced for quite basic pub food.

Drinks are over priced.

Service was shocking.

Cleanliness of the restaurant was very good.

After chatting about our experience in HUCKS, we all agreed the most American thing about our stay was the service charge on the bill.

Maybe 2 stars is...

The experience at this restaurant was bad from the get go, we were welcomed in and seated at our table and brought our first round of drinks and asked what we’d like to eat, we were then brought our starters shortly after, this however is when it started to go downhill. After we’d had our starters we were left to sit and wait for the best part of an entire hour with nobody coming over to apologise or let us know what was happening, only after waiting for 45 minutes did the waitress come over and say it wouldn’t be much longer and would only be another ten minutes.. however ten minutes went by and she then came over a second time to say it would be ANOTHER ten minutes, by this point we were all annoyed wondering how long it would be. Ten mins later the food did arrive and most people’s meals were fine (there were six of us) but two people ordered the half chicken and neither of them were cooked properly with one of them having blood coming out of the middle, we understand that chicken can still be pink sometimes and that bones can cause a pink colour to appear on the meat but this was definitely blood and was not cooked properly, presumably because the chefs knew that we’d been waiting far too long and rushed it out to us, we did take it to the waitress who took it away and got a manager to come and speak to us and he did apologise and have my boyfriend a fresh plate of food which was appreciated, he also knocked the price of that meal off the bill which was also very much appreciated but this has unfortunately made us not want to return. It was a mixture of poor customer service and leaving us to wait and wait for a good hour before asking us if we needed anything or to apologise for the wait coupled with the undercooked food. We understand that restaurants can be busy and hectic but at least come over to check on your customers instead of just...

The food here was OK, nothing special, but the service was dire. The welcome desk were the highlight, coming over as professional and efficient. We were charged a deposit as we were a large party. More on that later.

The bar where we waited prior to seating was a mixed bag. OK for the first drinks but had the awful waiting at the bar and staff actively ignoring you, even when shouting and waving!

Meal service was the real low light of the visit. Three meals were missed off the order sent to the kitchen and arrived late as a result. These were refunded and the response by the manager was courteous and efficient. Paying the bill was another difficulty. We were a large party and split the bill between card and cash. Given the organisation of the dinning room staff this was a predictable end to the visit. We paid one waitress and were harassed for payment by another who seemed to think I might have paid someone who didn't work there, when in reality it was just being paid into the system and hadn't appeared yet. We also had a whole load of confusion with the deposit. Mean a £5 amount was removed and later readded to the bill. I figured this out as the staff seemed not to know. This related to the number of adults in the party (no deposit for children) as we'd overstated by 1 the number of adults.

Overall, if we were to return to Centre Parcs we wouldn't consider returning to Hucks. Hopefully better standards of service exist in the other food...