Beefeater White Hart — Restaurant in Rother

Unbelievable experience here! Second visit to a Beefeater "restaurant". I thought the 1st visit was bad, but at least the menu items that were available on that visit arrived. Today we were booked for a 1pm lunch. We had our drinks order taken, and the waitress returned with the drinks but hadn't brought a spoon or sugars for the person who had asked for tea, this wasn't a huge deal as they don't add sugar, but she said she would just grab those and be back, this took 10 minutes, so a good job that they weren't required or their tea would have started to go cold. When she returned she had a tray of drinks for the neighbouring table, so it was clear she had decided to wait for the bar staff to prepare their drinks rather than drink back that spoon and sugar while the staff prepared the other patrons drinks. We waited while she gave the table their drinks and asked if we could now order our meals, which were ordered at 1:15, at 2pm we asked our waitress if we could get an ETA on our meals. She started flustering around, speaking to the kitchen and to her colleagues. We overheard her being told to apologise and tell us a system glitch meant our order hadn't been transferred to the kitchen. So was being advised to lie to us. We knew this as after taking our order she had been called away by that same colleague to do something else, then she took another tables food order, and we clearly had been forgotten within that process, we would have much rather she had been honest and say she'd forgotton put our order through on the system. She then offered to put the order through, but said there was a 40 minute wait for food. So would have been gone 3 by the time our food would have arrived. And 2 of the orders would need to be changed, because those items were no longer available. So a 1pm booked table, would have waited until 3pm before any sight of the ordered meals would have arrived. Needless to say left! And went elsewhere, disappointed that we had essentially wasted more than an hour of our afternoon and now rather hungry. I honestly feel for this waitress in this debacle, she told us she was new, but had been left to fend for herself looking after an area. So while she may have failed to deliver a service to us, the restaurant is clearly failing on a training level, and another more senior member of staff should have been keeping at least half an eye on her, rather than allowing her to struggle. As we were walking out, the table adjacent to ours were also questioning where their meals were, with the shift manager as by this point they had also been waiting around an hour without any sign of their meals. When asked when they ordered he gestured to us and said "just after them, and it looks like they're giving up", I acknowledged this as true, but we went without word from that duty manager, just the poor waitress who had made these mistakes. This was a birthday meal for my father in law, and has marred an otherwise nice weekend. Vote with your feet and...

JUNE 2018: Pretty disappointing first experience. Visited here for lunch on a Saturday. We waited at the front by the door for about 10 minutes before we were even seated. There was no front of house staff at the counter. We ordered our drinks and then our starters and mains and our drinks didn't come for 25 minutes after we ordered them. We ordered two Pepsi Max's. How long does that really take? When the waitress brought the drinks over she said, 2 diet pepsi's. I stopped for a moment and thought no, it's supposed to be Pepsi Max. She says oh our Pepsi Max machine is broken. Well not being funny, but you don't just change someone's order and act as if that was what I ordered. I was not informed the machine was broken at ordering. Anyway, we accepted the diet pepsi's and then waited what felt like an eternity for our starters. Only our mains came out before our starters. Odd to say the least. I also ordered steak and asked for it medium rare, it came to me well done and looked as though it had just been cremated. They also didn't bring a steak knife and I demonstrated to the waitress how it was not possible to eat the appalling steak I was presented. I sent it back and waited for my meal to me done again in which time everyone else had finished eating.

When I requested the bill at the end, they did actually deduct my main from the bill which I feel was the right thing to do. However, it was still a pretty appalling first experience.

UPDATE (FEB 2019): Though i'd return and give them another chance to redeem themselves. Oh dear oh dear! We both had ordered the double bacon cheese burgers and well. The bacon was strips of charcoal, the bun had been pushed down and squished, the entire base of the bun was sodden due to the sheer amount of grease and fat. The lettuce was sitting in a pile of grease . We raised this with the waiter and credit to him, he looked at the meals and was as shocked as we were. He said, I can see the burnt bacon from here and when I moved the burger off my plate and showed him the sodden napkin, he said that's not good. He went away and replaced our burgers and took 50% of our bill which is fair. I just can't quite believe that on both occasions here I have had the worst possible experience.

I will not be returning here for food ever again!! I have reduced my rating...

I'm a local business owner & have always supported other local businesses & promoted local amenities to my guests. I booked a table for my guests (two adults & a child) and was assured their was space available,(A Friday) which would be reserved for them.(My guests wanted a steak meal for their last night.) Fortunately I took the name of the person I spoke to.

On arrival, my guests were told no booking had been made.The guests rang me from their mobile & handed the phone over to the manager, who confirmed a booking had not been registered on their system, but somewhat reluctantly accepted my word, when I mentioned the name of the person I'd spoken to. (By then, he was apparently off duty.)

Feeling this might just have been an oversight, days later, we ourselves went to the restaurant to have a meal as a family to celebrate my sons 18th Birthday. The waitress began by asking if we'd been told what 'was not on the menu.' (We were told it was a Sunday & they had no deliveries) but the waitress didn't even introduce herself. We waited over 50 mins for the meal & when it finally arrived the steak was so tough it was inedible & uncooked. Not all the sides arrived with the meal & we had to ask the staff for both them & the steak knives to eat it. Condiments only arrived after further request. To his credit the manager complimented two of the steaks & offered free deserts, however, we waited so long for those we nearly walked out. Considering the significance of the celebration it put a real dampener on the occasion we'd been really looking forward to.

I'm really at a loss to know what's going on here. is it under new management? We've eaten here before for family occasions & it used to be great.

The staff, although polite, clearly need retraining in how to follow through with both orders and bookings.

As we left, I overheard another couple in a separate part o the restaurant complaining about the service, despite the fact the place was not busy throughout our visit.

I really like this place & have been a long term customer here, but something is majorly wrong. Please sort it out folks. I can only recommend guests to place I feel confident I would go & where the service is good. My guests experience, and my own, shows a need for improvement. Please pull it together as we value what we have on...