The Oaks — Restaurant in North Kesteven

As a rational person normally I wouldn’t tarnish or write negative things which could potentially impact someone’s business so what I will do is give my opinion of the experience I have had in the past & that of today. I have always rated the Oaks extremely highly, the food is lovely & staff have always been welcoming & I knew it was where I wanted to have my baby shower. My sister took the reins & duly liaised with Jamie. She made the effort to collect deposits & pre orders, she hadn’t had a response for a few days before so had tried to contact the oaks to no avail. After feeling slightly nervous about plans she finally heard back & knew what the plan of action was. We had two tables in the marquee outside, which was lovely … UNTIL we were inundated with wasps, then in typical British fashion the heavens opened. Prior to this the girls who worked there had said If this had happened we were more than welcome to come inside. This is what we had to do. After this my sister received a call from Jamie. Firstly accusing her of “taking up tables for lunch setting & costing them business” - there was no one waiting for tables. Secondly he insinuated she had pestered him - after a few days & a lack of a reply one call does not deserve that level of attitude. Not only did he speak to her in an extremely condescending, patronising tone he made her cry. After, seeing her so upset & realising that we were an inconvenience to their business i then got extremely upset and instructed everyone to go home as we clearly were not welcome or not made to feel that way anyway. This is my last child, last baby shower, an experience I wanted to remember forever. We all spent a lot of money today & albeit the money is not the issue the fact that I can never have another baby shower, I can never get those moments back with my family & my friends. It’s completely tarnished with the unwelcome feeling I now have about going there. I’m incredibly disappointed, incredibly upset & I won’t be going there again. No amount of money or apologies will bring back the memories i have now lost. I’m incredibly sad that this has happened as I have had no bad experiences here prior to today. I completely understood his thought process but not the...

We booked a large party 2 days prior, 10 people in total including 1 child. We waited for an hour after arrival for our food to be given out before asking the waitress where the food was. She was quite rude, telling us that she was the only one on, there were multiple tables in front of us and couldn't give us an estimate for our food arrival. I have upmost sympathy for her if she was short staffed and will always make allowances for things beyond staff control. However there are a few points that need to be made.

We notified them with plenty of time that we would be here, ample opportunity to adjust serving times and staff levels to accommodate for us. Now suppose someone called in sick and they were unexpectedly short handed, I would still expect that this be communicated to us, to let us know that there would be a wait for our food. In the 1 HR and 30 min we were there, we didn't even get offered a second round of drinks orders. It appeared that we were completely forgotten about. We ended up leaving because we couldn't wait anymore for our food, as I'm sure other parents of young children will appreciate.

The food looked amazing, just disappointed that we didn't get to try it.

EDIT: The response is disappointing as well. I think waiting for 1.5 hrs for food to be served with no updates and no further drinks orders offered is not a normal 'leisurely brunch experience' and it's not great to feel that the blame for your poor service has been shifted back onto us as the customer. I acknowledge that a couple of our party didn't arrive with the rest of us but I don't think that's an excuse for our overall experience. Your response is a bit unfair to imply we were all so late that there was no way for you to get food out in a timely fashion. Even if this was the case, you did not inform us that there might be more of a wait than expected. In fact we were basically ignored for our whole visit past our only drinks orders. Perhaps a better response would have been to accept some responsibility and review your...

Oh wow, I was in the process of leaving a review when I noticed this establishment has been review bombed by a lot of angry Karen's. Obviously I can't comment on what happened but for them to all gaggle together in an attempt to destroy a businesses reputation online is pretty horrendous. It goes to show how easy it is for this to happen. Surely one collective review is enough to demonstrate you are upset or not happy. Unfortunately businesses can't get it right 100% of the time and is often a learning process. When a herd of Karen's do this to a business they have no care and consideration for the staff members or people that rely on this business including other local business's. They are blinkered by hate, anger and vengeance and that is not how things should operate in a modern day society.

I might add I have eaten here several times and it's always been great, sure there have been times where its not been 100% perfect but nowhere ever is. The staff have always been polite and courteous and friendly.

By the sounds of things, maybe something went wrong with this party of people but a business can't grow and learn from things like this if its just ripped down and pulled...