Harvester Yeoman Nuneaton — Restaurant in Nuneaton and Bedworth

Edited as following a phone call with the manager we were convinced to give it another try so went today 12/11/23... Same problems, plus more, different day! After Mark, the manager, convinced me via a phone call to give them another try my son and I returned today willing to believe the last time was just "one of those days", however it sadly proved not to be the case. We arrived at 12.05 and were seated even though we were early for our 12.15 table. Asked the waitress at 12.30 when she came to take our orders if there would be any problems with ordering the half chickens based on last time, after dithering and trying to guess by looking at them she went to ask the chef, and came back to say it'd be "half hour ish" before they'd be ready, so I decided to order the simply chicken breast instead. My son ordered the dirty bird burger. The food came and the disappointment was felt... I had lukewarm gravy, the chicken breast was only just cooked (but edible) and the jacket potato was so hard on the outside I couldn't eat it for fear of cracking a tooth. However it was my son's meal that was the biggest problem - the burger bun fell apart as he picked it up spilling its contents all over his plate. The cheese was processed and just a gloop, the chicken over cooked and fried to within an inch of of being black. Despite being hungry, we just gave up and asked for the bill. Mark was beyond professional in dealing with both occasions, and admitted himself he wouldn't be happy with the burger. He obviously had no idea that there would yet again be a problem with the half chickens, the shock on his face when I mentioned it was evident! My main question being that the main menu is stated as being available from 11.30am, we ordered at 12.30 - regardless of being told we were the first to order off the main menu, why were there no half chickens ready to be served when they should've been available a hour before? Mark is a credit to this place, as are the majority of the serving staff, and he genuinely seemed heartbroken that twice in a row, and in such a short time frame, there had been not only the same problems but others too!

29/10/23 Very disappointed today, took my adult son for a birthday lunch as it's our "go to" place and we frequent it often, and have done for many, many years. Half a hour after ordering (and hearing the table next to us be seated then informed of a 45 min wait for rotisserie chicken) a waitress came and informed me that there was no rotisserie chicken available for my order at all, but they could fulfil my son's burger order as they had all other chicken. No mention of a time wait for any more, just handed me a menu and told me to choose something else if i wanted to! My son wasn't happy with the prospect of a split serving or delaying our meal any longer as we were hungry and had been looking forward to it, but decided to forget it based on staff attitude, so asked for the bill as we'd already had a salad bowl and were halfway through drinks. Another waitress, Kacey, came over and couldn't apologise enough, bless her, and only charged me for drinks due to the fact my order had been taken with no notice of the chicken shortage and the fact it'd been left so long before I'd been told. She really is a credit to the place, and on today's service the only saving grace! The past few times I've been there has been problems with food shortages, but they've always been highlighted by staff straight away - the way things were handled today is not the way to do things if you want to...

I have given this review 3 stars because it would be unfair to give less based on the fact that the Harvester is a restaurant and the food was in fact, as usual, very good for the price and the fact that it is a chain restaurant. I have never really been disappointed with a meal from the Harvester and particularly enjoy their breakfast menu. The service, however, reminds me every time we do sit in at the Harvester of the reason we don’t go very often at all. There are many quick fixes to the service at this establishment and I can’t imagine I will be the first person to bring these to the attention of management, which is probably the part that puts me off the most. We arrived just after midday on a Sunday, so granted this is a busy time at restaurants. My first complaint is regarding the area you are required to wait in to be seated. The area is not visible to staff if they aren’t passing through the lobby area or are near either of the two entrances to the seating areas, so as has been the case almost every time I have visited, we were waiting for what felt like an abnormally long time for anybody to even acknowledge us. Somebody did see us but didn’t come over, ask anybody else to come over or make an effort to let us know we might need to wait a little longer, so in essence we were seen and ignored. The young lady (who’s name I didn’t obtain but was very polite in general) who did attend to us advised that the only available table would be in the bar so we would just need to go up and order food/drink ourselves which was no problem. When we ordered our food at the bar, the theme of ignorance continued with 2 members of staff chatting whilst preparing drinks which isn’t an issue at all but we were the only customers at the bar and I don’t know if my expectations are set too high but a very quick ‘2 seconds and I’ll be with you guys’ wouldn’t have gone amiss. When we were actually served, I could see that my expectations were in the wrong place anyway as the lady who served us had a horrendous attitude and in my honest opinion I do not think she should be working in a public/customer facing role. There wasn’t an ounce of customer service offered in the short interaction we had with her, asking a question felt like pulling teeth and the answers I received were almost huffed out. I was spoken to like a child when I asked about bowls for the salad bar, there was another young member of staff in earshot who heard how I was spoken to and looked at me as if to say ‘sorry about that’. I dread to think what she must be like to work with. I overheard a conversation between said staff member and a customer who had just walked in, another very abrupt transaction. I wouldn’t be surprised if this lady was the manager as there is no way you would be serving customers with that attitude if you were at all conscientious about your performance. The meal itself was very nice, we weren’t waiting too long for anything that we had ordered and I really enjoyed my dish. The service had completely put me off returning. I have waitressed previously for many years and I know that busy days can be tough, but I also know that there is absolutely no need or place for the attitude that I encountered today in a customer facing environment, let alone in a well known chain restaurant. If there is a manager who would be able to reach out to me, I would be happy to give you the name of the staff member and discuss in...

Walked in at 8:30 after trying to find somewhere to eat as a family after a day of spending time together. Noticed they didnt finish serving food until 9pm which worked out perfect for us, apart from the meal was far from perfect…. From the second we walked in we were shown to the table and the waitress just threw the menus down and didnt come back to ask for drinks. I approached the bar and she did inform me it was waitress service. The only decent member of staff in there was our waiter. He took our order and checked it over. 3 of the party had starters. Upon approaching the salad bar all we could hear was the disgusting language from the chefs and their disapproval of a table of 7 coming in at 8:30 and not only ordering mains but also starters! (It was only 3 starters that were ordered off the 2 course evening menu) I would like to say its the first time we have over heard disgusting behaviour from the chefs but it is not… A member of the party asked for some lettuce as it had ran out and what followed was an eye roll from the waitress. 40 minutes later our main meals arrived much to our confusion where were the starters we had ordered? The young girl who brought the food out was quite abrupt and said we were just told to bring out the mains. To our suprise 2 Gammons we had ordered exactly the same came out different. Neither had pineapple and only one was missing egg. We were accused of ordering it incorrectly which we did not, and they later told us they just didnt have any pineapple and we would need to go to the salad bar to get it. We asked the only decent member of floor staff (the guy who originally served us) where the starters were and he was just as confused. He later brought them out but obviously everyone was overwhelmed with the food infront of them and didnt want to eat the starters anymore. We even over heard the chefs again speaking negatively about our table saying we were being pathetic because we asked for the egg that was missing off one of our meals. We asked to speak to a manager and she did take items off of the bill which was generous. HOWEVER upon our complaints all she did was try to pin the blame on us and our original waiter who had not done anything wrong. She tried to make excuses for the chef’s behaviour and then tried to tell us that we didnt order them as starters which we did! We even heard the chefs moaning that we did order starters! The manager herself said she went to chase up a dessert we had ordered. Which again 35 minutes later had not arrived. By this point we had enough and asked for the bill. It was disgusting to hear the manager throwing her own waiter under the bus when he had done nothing wrong at all. This place needs to take a strong re-evaluation of their kitchen staff and management team. Yes we were compensated with the bill but it was not the point. Management should not use the excuse of we came in late into the evening. My simple response to that is don’t advertise that late or you should have turned us away when we got there. The only appreciation we have is for the young girl on the bar and the young guy who...