Mill House Beefeater — Restaurant in Reigate and Banstead

Last night we celebrated my sister’s birthday at an establishment she picked herself, and the service from the waitress and manager was atrocious and ruined the birthday celebration. After sitting at our table for 15 minutes with no menus, I asked the passing waitress if we could get some; she huffed and replied, ‘Give me a minute’. She proceeded to bring the stack of menus and place them on the table with no explanation to which dishes were not available on the night and walked away. We had to hand the menus out ourselves to our party. It then took 20 mins for a drinks order to be taken. After seeing the waitress attend to other tables that had sat after our own, the manager on shift, Toby, came to take our drinks order. Two guests in my party, who had just recently turned 18 years old, were not asked for ID. Despite having ‘challenge 25’ in place and the 18 yr old’s ordering their own alcoholic beverages, we expected the management, of all people, to ensure this protocol is followed. The drinks arrived, and the waitress, Zoe, came and reluctantly took our food order and ran it through the till. Five minutes later, we were told that the chicken goujons were not available and to choose a different starter dish. The starters arrived, after seeing them on the pass for a while. My friend ordered the calamari and received a fly in her sauce. I, personally, brought this up to Zoe and asked for another sauce, of which she visibly rolled her eyes, replied with ‘okay’, and walked away from the table to retrieve another. We received no apology, and the sauce containing the fly was not removed from the table; this seemed like a chore to her. We had to ask for someone to take the empty glasses from the table and order a few more drinks to have when our main course arrived. Again, the manager on shift, Toby, provided this for us. Our mains arrived; the hollandaise sauces were cold, but the steaks were cooked great. No additional sauces were offered, and no check was given to our table. Throughout, my party noticed the waitress providing this to other tables, making the table feel ignored and avoided. Drinks were visibly seen during our meal, prepared on the back bar for 20 minutes. My mum ordered a coffee, which was cold once it arrived, and sat on the tray. I had to physically ask a member of staff if we could receive our drinks; she replied, ‘Just give me a minute.’ We received our drinks when our food was practically finished. We sat with our plates for another 20+ minutes before they were cleared. We saw Zoe paying more attention to setting out the breakfast menus and closing the restaurant before coming to our table. Dessert menus were not offered, and we had to physically get someone’s attention to bring my sister’s cake out. We brought the issues up to the manager once we found him behind the bar, to which we received an abysmal apology stating that he was not aware. We had to flag the manager down to receive our Bill. We proceeded to ask about the service, and the response we received was unprofessional and rude. He made us feel unheard, and our questions about service meant nothing. He was argumentative with us and constantly made excuses. The team leader, Toby, was not professional and refused to see what we were saying. He failed to rectify the situation, saying, ‘We enjoyed the food and drinks, so he can’t take anything off the bill.’ Despite the calamari containing a fly, it remained on the bill. He did not seem at all bothered when we mentioned we would not return. The waitress, Zoe, and the manager on shift, Toby, lack basic hospitality values and respect. We will not...

Food was nice. The reason for the poor review is purely based off the service provided. We entered the restaurant and stood waiting for 5 minutes before anyone turned up to greet us. We had to go looking for someone in the end. When the manager on duty finally appeared there was no apology or greeting, simply a question “have you booked?”. The restaurant was very quiet but non the less we had actually booked a table and said yes and what name it was booked under. The manager asked if we had any allergies and we said no and she took us to our seats. Before even sitting down she was asking what drinks we wanted and we placed an order despite feeling a bit rushed. We then had our waitress arrive who was an older lady. She didn’t introduce herself so I’m unsure of her name but she was friendly and enough and interacted with our baby. Halfway through our meal we noticed our waitress was packing up her personal items and it appeared she was getting ready to finish her shift. At that moment a new waitress entered the restaurant near where we were seated and was very loud talking about her personal life and how “tired” she was and how she “couldn’t be bothered to be there” and she was at work so often that she should just “live at the restaurant as she was always there”. Slightly inappropriate but we tried best to ignore her loud chats with the kitchen staff. We had then finished our meals and waited for what seemed like a long time before anyone approached us. When someone finally did we noted it was this new waitress. She approached and said “are you finished”. We said “yes thank you” and she took the plates and left. Didn’t introduced herself or ask how our meals were. We did however look at her badge and her name was Zoe L. We then waited a long time again before going up to the station to collect our own menus to view desserts. Eventually Zoe returned and said “do you want any desserts”. We did and we ordered. Again another long wait for desserts which then arrived and was placed on the table with no words spoken. I ordered a crumble with custard and the crumble itself looked fine but the custard was splatted on the side of the plate and dribbling up the side of the crumble pot with a spoon shoved in the middle so the handle was all covered in custard. Terrible presentation and clearly rushed. We then waited and waited and no one came to clear the plates so we eventually went up to a waiter who was wearing tracksuit bottoms (uniform standards??) and was on his phone texting and asked if we could pay. His name was Jack. He took payment but said nothing. We gathered our items and left. No one around to say goodbye. Not once asked how our food was (in this situation it all tasted lovely). The bar staff were quick at refilling our refillable drink. Customer service from waitresses and managers were just at a really poor level. No manners, no professionalism. Disappointing as it impacts your experience...

Had a lovely meal here with the family on Fathers Day.

Website said they had no availability until 19:30, so we apprehensively booked it hoping service wouldn't take forever as we wanted to get our 5 year old to bed early.

We turned up at 19:20, the top part of the restaurant was almost empty, which made us wonder why it said there was no availability until 19:30. The bottom of the restaurant appeared to have a few more people seated.

We waited a few minutes to be seated, there was seemingly no staff around not even at the bar. Once seated and before we'd even opened the menus we had our drinks order taken straight away which was good, and drinks arrived within a few minutes. We didn't realise these were bottomless until we received the bill, and had turned down requests for further drinks earlier in the evening.

The food was as to be expected for a beefeater, and arrived quite quickly. The nachos were a smaller portion than we'd expected, being a sharing dish, and needed a lot more of each topping, but it did us fine.

I had the Baconator burger which tasted nice, chips could've done with a minute or two longer as they were a bit soft.

My partner has the sirloin steak and was happy with it, with only a small piece being chewy.

Our daughter had the chicken poppers, there were more chips on the plate than poppers which always annoys me with restaurants, I'd rather more of the protein, she enjoyed it though, and it arrived nice and hot.

We both had the biscoff sunday for pudding and would highly recommend it. Our daughter had the berry blast Sunday and loved every bite.

Bill came to around £75 and luckily my partner was able to use her taste card discount which brought it down to around £60

The bill took longer than expected to come, and when it did there was a technical issue with their payment system that wouldn't allow anything through. We ended up leaving there at 10pm, which is far, far later than we'd expected to.

Would we go again? No, it's overpriced for what it is when you consider we can have a lot of freshly cooked meat, salad, bread and chips/rice as well as a couple of drinks at our local Turkish restaurant for £50 all in, and the service is slower than we're comfortable with.

Parking is free at the rear, and is shared with the Premier Inn. Unfortunately there's no playground for the kids to play outside, so be prepared for boredom and...