Crosspool Tavern — Restaurant in Sheffield

Absolutely shambolic. Despite being told there was an hour-long wait for food, after waiting for that hour we were told that there was no dough for our pizzas and no wrap for a halloumi wrap, and were 'generously' offered to replace the pizzas with any burger we wanted (despite burgers being £2 cheaper than the pizzas originally ordered - a difference only refunded when we brought it to their attention) and the wrap replaced with a burger bun. A further half hour wait ensued, before food arrived, which was, at best, bland chain pub fare, and at worst featured chips still frozen inside.

Kitchen and wait staff were all incredibly apologetic and I can't imagine these issues stemmed from them. I can only assume extremely poor management decisions and managerial attitude of ignoring problems for as long as possible were to blame, but I would have to be paid to sit through that experience again. I understand that circumstances are tougher and more stressful than usual, but the biggest disaster here was that of horrifically mismanaged expectations - I would have much rather been told of the numerous issues with the food in advance and we could have knocked it off and hit up KFC for some better food on a respectable timescale.

That being said, the people I ate with did invite me based on their rather more pleasant experiences at the carvery, but this experience has drastically lowered the pub in all of our expectations.

EDIT: In response to the 'owner's reply' - I think it is emblematic of the management style at The Crosspool Tavern that they claim they'd "appreciate a chance to turn our experience around" but have made no offer or claims of how exactly they would like to do so. All that can be assumed is that they would quite like us to pop in, pay full price, and leave once again disappointed. Any company actually interested in winning back disappointed customers would doubtlessly offer a heavy discount to make up for their previously poor service, or at the very least would outline how their future service would improve upon their mistakes.

For what it's worth, I don't believe that anything short of a completely free meal would tempt us back to this location and even that would feel like us doing a...

17.1.24 Came in with partner with a 50% off main menu offer, we decided to order something from the main menu instead of the carvery for a change, wish I'd not, it took half an hour for the food to come out and the pub was not very busy at all, my partner ordered a pizza which looked very nice and fresh to be fair, she requested no jalapeños which they did, she said it was was nice, I ordered The Hot porker burger, this was not nice at all, didn't look nice, it reminded me of those cheap tinned burgers, didn't even look like a real mince beef burger (see pics and you'll understand) I also wanted mine as standard with everything on but because my partner ordered no jalapeños, my "burger" also came without these, menu states it should be "drenched in nacho cheese sauce", it was not, was lucky if it had 3 tablespoons of nacho sauce on it. I also ordered the mozzarella pin wheels which turned up burnt underneath and didn't have much mozzarella in these, (unfortunately I didn't get a photo of these) the young guy that served and brought our food out was very polite and apologetic, after 3 attempts with the food and only once was it ok, I'm not sure if I'll be back anytime soon.

27.9.23... Had a 50% off voucher so thought id give it another try, ordered a large carvery, food this time was a lot better, didn't try the turkey or pigs, so I can't comment but everything else was much better.

5.7.23... Came in with my partner for a carvery, nice and polite staff, paid extra for all trimmings. The beef gravy, potato and leek mash, Yorkshires and stuffing were very nice, the beef was the best of the meats, the gammon was also nice but a little dry, the turkey was very dry and unable to swallow without the gravy, the pigs in blankets were burnt which was annoying as I'd paid extra for these, roasties were old and dry, I was told more was coming out but had about 15 mins to wait for these, I ended up having a few old ones and after finishing my dinner I went back up for fresh ones which still took another few minutes of waiting to come out, didn't try the peas because they were dry and shrivelled up. I think less but more frequently food...

We booked breakfast with Santa at 9.00 am. and was told to arrive 15 minutes before our booking time. At 9.05 am we were still waiting outside a locked pub!

We were told, they were running late and to sit down and someone would tell us when they were ready.

At 9.20 am we were still sat there. The table had not been decorated or laid correctly and , there was not enough seats at the table or cutely for our party of six. I went up to the bar and asked if we could now order drinks and food as we had to be at the cinema for 10.40.

The barman/manager? did not seem to know what he was doing and had to put the transaction through twice before I was allowed to pay. I asked about Santa and was told he was running late, I had to say do you need to know my nieces name and he said yes! It was only because another barman had asked this and we hadn’t been which I thought was strange.

The breakfast itself was lovely but it did take 3 attempts to find a working pepper! No-one was serving at the buffet so we didn’t need to produce tickets and no one explained what we were to do. There were no small plates so children just had the same size as adults.

Santa didn’t seem to get dressed properly, his own curly brown hair was handing out of the back of his hat for all the little children to see!

We finished our breakfast and left and no one said bye or thank you.

It was as though we had been invisible the whole time we...