Elmwood Farm - Farmhouse Inns — Restaurant in Rotherham

This is the second time we have recently had a bad experience at Elmwood Farm, usually the service is fantastic. For some reason even at breakfast time and the whole of the pub has reserved signs on practically every table. When asking to be seated the staff often say most is reserved. Clearly this is for carvery service later as we've never been in at breakfast time to nowhere to sit. The staff on the past two occasions have been quite precious about tables and reservations despite this clearly not being for breakfast. I would also like to highlight we had arrived just after 10.30am and when paying were told "to hurry up and go as soon as possible as the breakfast service will be finishing soon" there was still 25 minutes left of breakfast service. When arriving at the buffet there was limited selection, I asked for some hash browns and was told by a very rude chef on the breakfast pass that there were no longer any hash browns as breakfast finished in 15 minutes and it takes 30 minutes to cook. Maybe you should be cooking enough and not closing off your breakfast choices at 10.30am despite service running until 11am. The chef was really rude. 2 other customers approached service area to help themselves to the buffet asked about multiple items and were told there's no more left, they actually asked for a refund. The last time we came it took them half an hour to bring scrambled eggs on toast which the manager did resolve, so we didn't make a complaint. But the service today was abysmal. I don't understand the urgency of reservations and the apparent "lack of tables" when there was probably a maximum of 30 customers in the pub. None of the interactions with staff were positive and it's a definite decline in service recently. If I'm spending nearly £40 on breakfast I would be expecting a minimum service and availability of food. I don't know if the management has changed recently but sort it out, it's really disappointing because we are regular customers but recently I've avoided given two bad...

Very average pub chain food.

Addition to above based on owner reply.

I don't expect fine dining in places like this. The prices are very reasonable which is a good thing especially in todays financial crisis. I also understand that hospitality has been hit hard in the pandemic and I really want to support it in getting back on its feet.

But we attended as a large group of 15 for a birthday celebration. Some of the dishes that came out looked great and were pretty good. But 70% of them looked like the food had been thrown on the plate and chucked in a microwave.

I had the Southern fried chicken skewer combo and tbh it just looked pathetic on the plate. It was a handful of chips and a couple of skewers on a large ish plate and it looked pathetic if I'm honest. It was quite bland and if it wasn't for the Korean barbecue sauce I'm not sure I would have eaten it.

It looked and tasted like something I would expect from a Wetherspoons where you pay about 50p for a meal with a drink.

If it had just maybe had a bit of salad garnish or something to make it look a bit less pathetic.

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh as like I said some of the meals looked and tasted great (the smothered chicken for one) and on that basis I've upped a star.

Maybe I'm also a little over critical as the last time we visited there was very little on the menu available and what was available wasn't great at the...

Overcharged my wife by £10, it wasn't until we spoke to the manager (I think) that it was sorted. Server put the wrong item in, even though my wife queried at the time. Server wouldn't listen and said it was right. Table for eight and we all are at different times. Steak was nearly raw even though I asked it to be well done, cheesy garlic bread wasnt cooked, the chicken was slimy on one of the kids meals and the server didn't ask who each meal was for and just left it on the table. Meals came out 1 or 2 meals at a time, missing items on certain meals as well until we informed the cook. Cook brought a kids meal out and dropped the butter off onto her shoe, she bought some more out. Cook then brought another meal out and was in that much of a rush that she near enough dropped the plate on the table and the butter flew off and landed on my leg. My latte was that strong I couldn't drink it, when I asked for 3 more sugars I actually got 2 and the waitress disappeared as quick as she came, so I wasn't able to ask for another one. Food was actually ok except for the above problems. Would have preferred to sit away from the children's area, even though we had kids with us. Under 5 play area had older kids playing in it and at one point we thought the play house was going to tip over with the older kids sat on...