Harvester Bridge Oxford — Restaurant in South Oxfordshire

We are frequent visitors of this Harvester and it’s a shame to say after this visit we won’t be returning. With a partner in the restaurant business knowing the standards of the way things should be done, and having visited various restaurants together around the country, this was a bad experience. We frequently visited as a comfortable place for us with our young children. We ordered starters and for our child’s main to come alongside those so it was cool enough for him to eat with our mains. They came out and his was cool which we thought “oh that’s brilliant, they’ve made sure our little one can eat straight away”.. Seconds later we were told our mains are also ready as they’ve wanted to rush our food out so they can go home, and brought those over when we hadn’t begun our starters. These were also borderline cold. As a paying customer coming out for a nice relaxed family meal, this caused stress for us feeling rushed to eat our food before it all were to go cold, which it already was, and trying to make space for our child not to grab anything with all of the full plates on the table. My partner spoke with the new general manager, who we felt handled it amazingly, although we could see and hear the “telling off” and also so could others in the restaurant, which should have been dealt with in a more private setting away from customers. We were offered our meals cooked again, or 50% off the bill, we chose the second option as we wouldn’t trust the food after complaining as you hear the horror stories with doing that. We also didn’t order our child a pudding for that reason. The new general manager is great and has all of the ability to turn the whole place around, however over the years we have had multiple issues here and this was the last one. For example standing waiting at the door when first arriving for 10-20 minutes waiting isn’t ideal, neither is being seated incredibly close to the toilet door which all happened multiple times on different occasions but not this evening. The waiting staff are great, and the new general manager is amazing, however this place does need turning around by someone strong willed with a passion for it. Good luck for the future and I hope maybe we can come back in a few years and see improvements 🤞 but for now, would...

On entry had to wait a while to get seated, but eventually got shown to our tables by the lovely 😍 waitress. (Pity she wasn't our server for the night). Anyway I digress, we were given the menu and asked for our drinks orders after we had finally chosen our selected meals. Then our server said she'd come back with our salad bowls which she finally did and we tucked into the unlimited salad bar to get our Halloween 🎃 feast started. For my main I opted for the full rack of ribs, with cubes of corn bread with sliced jalapeño chilli's (too hot 🔥 for me) fries & the rainbow 🌈 Coleslaw. This meal was like standard pub grub fayre you'd find in any harvester or hungry horse establishment! But we all know they can be done very good or very very bad. In this case @ the London Road Wheatley Harvester, it was very very good.....the main was delicious and I finished every last morsal & was almost licking the plate.....the ribs with bbq sauce were done just right & the corn bread was filling and good too. The fries were of a good consistency (we should have ordered an extra portion to share) but nevermind....something for next time. After a few pints of peroni had gone down the hatch, it was time for dessert 🍨. I asked our server which was the most popular one and she replied the Rocky Road one with the brownie in the bottom. So I opted for that and it was delicious 😋. You need to have a sweet tooth for this one really though. I will definitely be coming back as its been years since my last visit and one of the waitresses took my eye too. Like I said the one who seated us....a slim thick type who had a visible tattoo on her back thro her nice uniform.......if she reads this my ig is mel_fernandes1.....pls feel free to slide...

Very very disappointing experience.

Booked a table at 7:45 so a completely normal time for dinner. 2 adults and 2 children.

Arrived and was seated, we like harvester and this is the closest one to us which was a 25 drive each way. We had already decided what we wanted.

Upon ready to order we were told the the following were sold out.. Rotisserie chicken Steaks, Mixed grill

Very disappointing as 2 of us wanted mixed grill.

We went for 2 lots of bbq ribs and 2 burgers come the end. My daughters bun for her burger looked like it had been kicked around the kitchen and the 2 portions of spare ribs needed a tub of E45 they were that dry.

If the children weren’t with us I would have took pictures to upload but I did not want to give them a complex about their food.

While we waited for dinner we went to the salad bar, no bread roll at all.

Spoke to the waitress, oh sorry we have sold out of all bread rolls.

After our dinner my partner asked for a decaf tea, ordered with waitress and was told oh sorry we have sold out of that.

So my partner asked for a baileys hot chocolate, The waitress replied .. oh sorry we have sold out of baileys!!!

Absolutely unbelievable.

Now the waitress was very polite so if it wasn’t for her it would have been 1 star.

Overall clearly a very badly managed restaurant and I’m sorry but the excuse of “we’ve had a busy day” isn’t good enough.

Thank goodness I heard the table next to us discuss the harvester app which allows 25% off food which I promptly downloaded and applied.

There was no offer of discount or even a free drink from the resturant given all the items that were sold.

Overall a really bad experience and we would...