Harvester Spytty Newport — Restaurant in Newport

After celebrating at our baby shower Sunday we decided to book a table for an evening meal to continue celebrations. Huge mistake. We turned up to be seated on a table with broken seats. We stood there waiting until the manager came back over to see us to a different table with more suitable seats, especially being heavily pregnant a stable seat is quite important. Our waitress Lesley then came over to start by taking our main orders. No drinks offered, no starters just straight to mains. My husband had to tell her about his allergy as she did not even check! She then responded to say “don’t worry it’s a nut free restaurant”. Having ate at multiple different harvesters including this one previously, this was new to us. One of us ordered the same burger as our last visit here asking for the bbq sauce & burger sauce to be on the side instead of in the burger. Last time, this was no problem, it came as asked with 2 little pots of sauce on the side. This time the waitress very rudely said “there’s bbq sauce on the table so you don’t need it on the side”. We then had to ask her if we could order drinks for her to huff and say the drinks machine is broke so she will have to get them for us. Please, don’t put yourself out. She brought our bowls for the salad bar, so we went over to find the bar over half empty! Literally tomato, coleslaw & pasta only! Why were we not made aware of this when booking or the very least by our waitress?! When the burger arrived, no sauce on the side as asked. No bbq sauce & the burger sauce was in the burger. We sent the burger back for them to try and follow a simple request again which they did but sadly you could tell they had scraped the sauce off the bun & grilled it a little more which turned the inside of the bun black. This is by far the worst waitress & food we have ever had at any harvester before. We didn’t even bother looking at deserts because we couldn’t wait to leave! Please retrain the staff, plan ahead/stock check for your supplies for the salad bar, train them on the importance of food allergies & perhaps suggest to this rude waitress that working with people may not be for her. I have to say the last 2 visits prior to this were superb but yesterday truly ruined it.

EDIT we received an email with 40% off this morning so after a long day at work we decided to try again & was hoping the guy that served us last time was working. Sadly not. We were seated & to our huge disappointment here comes Lesley. We were hoping her attitude would be better today but no, she approached our table by saying that she read the review & that she’s worked there for ages going on a rant about the review we left. The fact she knew it was us from the detail of my review only goes to show the truth in my original review. I asked her to get someone else to serve us to which she responded by saying “do you know what, I’m refusing to serve you” and stomped off with other tables looking astonished at her. My husband went to get the manager who told us “understandably Lesley is upset by the review she was probably having a bad day”. She should be upset by the way she treated paying customers the other day & now treated a heavily pregnant woman & her husband again! The manager should have approached us & apologised for Lesley’s outburst but she moved us to a different table for another waitress to serve us. We sat there for a few minutes & decided to leave & go to a nearby pub where I have to say our waitress greeted us & asked to take our drinks order first so we are now enjoying our meal. I have also reported Lesley to Head Office. I do hope no one else experiences her “bad day”.

UPDATE Manager has kindly apologised on Lesley’s behalf & given us a kind gesture for the terrible experience. I hope Lesley has better days & gets the...

!! EDIT !!

Myself and my husband have now visited this harvester a few times since I wrote this review and can say that the service has been so much better, food menu has improved and the staff and managers have defiantly gone above and beyond to make us feel more welcome and accommodated. I do believe the waitress’s we had an issue with is no longer working there also. The staff they have there now are just great!

I have changed my star rating now to a 4* as since management acknowledged our review and complaint and helped turn my opinion of the restraunt and its staff from a negative to a positive, I now am happy to visit on a regular basis!!

If I could give No stars… I would!!

Service and customer relations have gone down hill in this particular Harvester (only 2 male staff/servers there that are actually nice and seem to want to be there and do their job properly).

When we first arrived and were seated we were put on a table for 8 and there was only 4 of us, when asked if we could move to a smaller table as there was too many seats for us and the table was too big, plus we couldn’t get past a pram and a larger family that were sat close to us, we were told NO and that the numerous table of 4’s left were already booked?!?! I suggested maybe 4 other customers that have booked in after us who were not already there yet could go on the table for 8 then instead of us?!?! The server didn’t seem to understand what I was suggesting though, guess it was a little to hard for her to understand maybe?!?!

We had 2 young female staff in total talk to me and my husband in a rude manner so I would suggest better staff training in “social interaction with customers” as this made us leave despite booking in advance for a Father’s day lunch with our children.

Also, There is NEVER chicken skewers prepped and ready despite being on the menu…. Why have them on the menu?!?!

The manager I spoke to was very apologetic about the whole situation and actually offered us one of the tables that one of the rude server’s said were apparently booked for other people in a group of 4, that we weren’t originally allowed, but we declined as we felt uncomfortable.

Won’t be back to this Harvester again which is a shame as me and my husband would go here every week on our...

My other half took me out for a date night for my birthday and celebration of a new job on 14th September at 6pm.

We usually go to the Harvester in Cwmbran as we love the experience there, along with the food but on this occasion we decided to eat here.

Upon walking in our server didn't say hello, was rude from the get go and didn't smile. We were seated and given menus. We had to wait 20 minutes for our drink order to be taken (even in a quiet store) whilst our server pottered around trying to look busy. We were ready to leave especially as people seated after us were served before us.

The manager saw our frustrations and apologised saying '2 minutes'. Sure enough our server appeared out of nowhere and took our drinks. I had asked for something (that I didn't know they didn't have) and had 'we don't have that here' barked at me. Myself and my partner were gobsmacked.

So she took our order without a the ipad they use to take orders. Which we thought was strange. After our orders were taken we never saw her again

Our food arrived and the steak was cooked wrong, and it was extremely grisly and a poor cut of steak. The sage and onion dusting on my chips was missing, the hot honey cornbread was over cooked. In all a very POOR meal.

We alerted the manager about our experience and he took the drinks off the order, and £10 off the meal. He was the redeeming factor in all of this but unfortunately we WON'T be returning.

Mainly on the basis on the abhorrent service we recieved when we walked in. The server is a discredit to Harvester Newport and made us feel unwelcome.

We'll stick to Cwmbran...