The Botanist Reading — Restaurant in Reading

Booked a table here for my sister's birthday and they gave us a bench behind the band and the table was a bit dirty, we were moved to a dining table with chairs about 15 minutes as that was what I had booked.We were only given a table at 845 and were rushed. As soon as we got the food we were asked if we finished and it seemed like we were pushed to eat asap. We tried to order more starters before ordering mains, after we finished our 1st round to which the waitress was fine. A few minutes later, the waitress said '' this is it. You can't order anymore, we will still serve your starters, but unfortunately can't serve you any mains'' to which I was stunned as we were never informed about last orders etc. The manager/supervisor stepped in saying it doesn't work this way and we can't keep ordering food. We need to decide what we want and order in one go only. We ultimately decided not to eat anymore, also to say the food was very bland to say the least. I've dined at other Botanist R&B but never experienced such service.

The waitress was quite good. She was quite new to the role and wished she was briefed more by her managers.

The food was very underwhelming and had no absolute taste. I would have told the server if there was a checkback, but there was absolutely none.

In the end we decided just to pay and leave. Not coming back, nor...

Would not recommend Botanist based on service. Called up last minute to see if they could fit us in and they did which was amazing. We turned up and outside we saw a sign for a graduation deal, which was fitting as I had just graduated and the deal seemed reasonable. We walked in where staff didn’t really acknowledge us until one girl (who was really nice and friendly) spoke to us and sat us down. We waited a while, so my friend stood up and asked someone to come over. We wanted to speak to the manager as the graduation deal was only applicable for bookings but someone advised us to speak to the manager about this. The female manager finally came over and informed us nothing could be done. At this point we had a lot of time to look at drinks menus but she just walked off straight away. I thought that was really rude, so we left. Not only was it not very busy at all, but we couldn’t see many graduation parties either. There was 5 of us so not a massive group. I used to work in reading for 5 years in the industry and I quickly learnt how easy it is to accommodate guests, making exceptions ect. Seemed very unprofessional. We didn’t dispute the deal, but she just walked away so we didn’t even have the chance to order drinks. Graduation is a really important celebration and although the deal couldn’t be applied, some basic customer service...

I’ve been here a couple of times now. The first time we had a lovely time, great atmosphere and delicious food. So I decided to come back with a friend after a couple of weeks (both times it was on a Saturday night). We arrived two minutes before our booking time, we were seated somewhere as per manager(?)’s instructions and then asked to move by the same person. Then another waiter asked us why we moved (?!); no one showed up for a while then they took our drinks order and disappeared for a while.. finally the food arrived 1h after we arrived (we didn’t mind, it’s Saturday night and we can have a chat in the meantime). And.. 20 minutes later the same waiter comes to us and -in a very impolite manner- tells us we have just until 8.15pm before we need to leave. Let me recap: we arrive at 6.30pm our food is served at 7.30pm we are given a warning at 7.50pm finally at 8.17 we are reminded that we are two minutes past our booking slot. When we said “well we know what our booking is but you served the food late” he said “the kitchen is very busy because it’s Saturday night”. Well we understand that but the attitude was just wrong and also I can’t rush my dinner because you want to maximise. By the way at least three tables around us were empty. The food was not exceptional this time and we felt rushed. Not a...