Bill's Reading Restaurant — Restaurant in Reading

I'm giving a 2 cause when the right food came it was nice. But it did not need to be this stressful. I booked the table in advance with a note that one of my party of 4 have an orange allergy and this was myself.

It was fairly busy and first server we had was lovely and bar one wrong drink that was quickly resolved no issue.

Another server came to take our food order and it was downhill from here. She tells us to order quickly and she feels hostile. We order and purposefully point to item on the menu as we say it. She does not repeat our order back to us. She hurriedly takes the menus then as shes leaving asks "any allergies" I reply yes and say my orange allergy. She asks "Orange or orange juice?" I say Oranges overall, she repeats the question asking which is it. I reply oranges including fruit and juice, she says its not a main allergen. I say I know this and its not the first time I was there and know not to order things that could risk it. I was then told they couldnt garuntee what I had wouldnt have oranges. I had ordered a big bills brunch.

Food comes out later and half of my friends order is wrong. He asks for it to be changed, it was also his drink that was wrong the first time. The server comes back hostile saying "No, this is what you ordered! I repeated the order back to you two times!" She had not. I know that cause her vibes had made me so uncomfortable I was aware enough I can repeat back the conversations word for word. My friend is bafflrd for a moment, he had been very nice about it only to be mey with aggression. He replied that he hadnt ordered it. She replied "So you dont want to eat this lovely food!?". No, because its not what he ordered and I was very agitated by this and said no I heard he didnt order that she replies again going "Well what will it take for you to eat it?" My friend says If he could get the houmous that was at least meant to come with what he ordered he would be happy. She says okay but glares at me. After a while he gets his whole original order. Later on my other friend orders a coffee and are nearly given someone elses having to insist only one was ordered. She was perfectly polite to my other friend but not me and my friend whos order she got wrong. And normally I would look past it as a fluke but considering she is only hostile to the only 2 brown people at the table consistently I kind of cant look past that. Especially as she continued to scowl as she was walking past us at times.

We get to the bill and another staff member brings the bill and we are given a bill that is double what we ordered for, has items we certainly didnt order and doesnt have some of the items we did. We immeadiately flag it up and say this is not our bill. That staff member apologises and goes to get the server as he says she will print it off again. Could it have been an honest mistake with a busy shift, maybe. But with the whole experience thus far I wouldnt be suprised if it was purposeful. She eventually comes over with a card reader and we split evenly 4 ways. As the reciepts come out they are held out to us and my friend is handed hers, the rest of us reach for ours when put infrojt of us only for them to be chucked onto the table centimeters from our fingers...

Overall I'm not going to forget that experience. We were at the start of the meal talkinf about coming again for pancakes and frankly I defo wont be now and doubt I would go again or take any of my other friends or family. It was stressful for no real reason and I'm quite...

Disappointed at our visit compared to previous visits. We booked a table to have brunch as we have done in the past. When we arrived and said our name we got told to wait while they see if there is a table free. Eventually got shown half way up a staircase and was met on the landing by someone after a few minutes. We got shown to our seats then asked us for our orders but walked off with a part order and we had to call back to complete our order. The food turned up cold and swimming in hollandaise sauce accompanied by a cold black coffee. We asked for some milk twice but only ended up with about a shot glass of milk for one after about ten minutes . We was not asked if what we had was ok. We got the attention three times for a member of staff and three times they just carried on what they was doing . Someone came and asked if they could clear the table . They did ask if everything was ok . I said not really and before I could explain she just went ok and wandered off before we could say what we was unhappy with. 10 minutes later waiting to just pay and leave we stood up put our coats on . Another 2 minutes passed and we just went down stairs to pay and left. I should have just left as nobody would have noticed and what we had fell well below the standards I was expecting. A bitter end to a great...

As you can tell from my food rating, this place doesn't have the best food. It's plated nicely, and the food looks right. But I had a chance to taste their steak, calamari, fish+potato something, duck spring rolls. Let me break it down for you. The steak was rubbery, and it wasn't an accident because a third of our company party said the same thing. The calamari was fried in old oil and looked dark and tasted greasy. The fish/potato concoction was bland. I believe it was a salmon dish but you'd be hard pressed to find any pink fish in it. It mainly tasted like a watery mashed potato. The duck spring rolls were something interesting, it had an 80's Diet Coke with saccharin aftertaste in the sauce the duck was cooked in. Almost as if the kitchen ran out of sugar and just used whatever artificial sweetener they had thinking nobody would notice the difference. Well, I did. So food - meh.

On the other hand, the place is so pretty! They have an upstairs seating area that can easily host 30 hungry diners. The booths downstairs look so gorgeous and out of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The wait staff was polite, friendly, helpful and prompt. They even climbed up on a bar to take a group photo of us twice. That alone made me give it a 4 star rating.

But yeah,...