Willow Trentham Gardens — Restaurant in Stafford

Have been here quite a few times and it's usually fine. Our experience today however was terrible.

We had a Low table in the drinks area, however they knew we wanted food as they gave us a menu as we were seated. Waited around 20/25 no order for food or drinks was taken. So I asked if we needed to order at the bar? "No , I will get someone to come over."

Waited another 10 mins , someone eventually came. Still never asked us about drinks I had to remind them as we ordered no one had ever taken a drinks order from us. In the time all this had taken we watched other customers come in ,sit , order and receive their food.

Unfortunately it only gets worse. I had the Willow Breakfast and asked to swap tomato for extra beans.

My wife ordered a sandwich and asked if it would be possible to swap feta cheese for Halloumi. " I will check " is the answer we got.

Never had any communication back.

Our food arrived and it had been swapped.(more on this later)

Never asked if our food was ok, if we wanted more drinks no check up at all, no water for our dogs as we usually get given.

Basically all around terrible /non existent service.

This is why I hate automated tips on food bills.

Anyway we finished and I wanted to pay with a gift card so I asked if so could pay and could they please remove the tip from the bill. Fine I was told, they took my phone off me and disappeared. Never showed me any bill / amount . Came gave my phone back and flashed a receipt in my face saying "you can see we took the tip off"

What they had failed to realise was no one ever gave me any bill in the first place so the only confirmation of amount paid was a piece of paper flashed in my face taken away.(after the charge had been made anyway)

The amount didn't seem right but I had no copy of the bill so I went and asked for one.

No one had ever said but we had been charged (WITHOUT OUR KNOWLEDGE IS THE CRUCIAL PART HERE) £2,50 to swap tomato to beans

£3.50 to swap feta for Halloumi.

It was so bad because no one ever told us anything about this when we ordered nor were we given a copy of the bill before we paid .

It felt like they knew exactly what they were doing as they just flashed the bill in my face for second to show the tip was removed and took it away again.

Eventually after I spoke to some one who said the would remove the £2.50 but we would have to pay the £3.50 and Halloumi is more expensive than feta, my wife then went up and explained she would have just had the feta had they informed us it would be £3.50 to swap, the same with me for £2.50 swap tomato for beans, so they put us the £6 on a gift card. The whole situation became embarrassing like we were being backward customers when willows lack of communication is what caused this.

I visit paragon venues quite a lot each year and this experience has really put us off, it was extremely embarrassing, all caused by poor service and non existent communication.

To be clear I'm not complaining about the charges it's the restaurants decision to charge whatever they want BUT YOU HAVE TO LET US KNOW WHEN WE ORDER SO WE CAN MAKE AN INFORMED CHOICE.

£2.50 to change tomato for beans, laughable really. Then imagine charging my gift card with me having zero idea how much you charged me until after you put it through.

Very very...

Firstly, the other parogon sites have such high standards of service. This place really lets the group down. It was a quiet day with only us and 4 other tables. We travelled an hour to get here after visiting the other local sites and having great experiences we thought it would be worth it. We were wrong.

We were sat down and left for 20 mins before being able to order drinks. We ordered food at the same time to avoid waiting any longer.

Words can not describe how disappointed we were with our food. Pasta was overcooked and mushy, sauce was extremely bland it tasted like a Tescos own microwave meal. Added the chicken and that was almost black, also extremely dry it was hard to swallow. How they can serve that pasta as a standard without the chicken is beyond me because it’s worth all of £3 never mind £16. Left the entire dish after 3 bites.

Was never once asked if the food was ok because I would have sent it back. Left us with the dirty plates for over 20 minutes and then who appeared to be a manager took them away without saying a word. Just grabbed them on her way past. Absolutely no chance to mention how little we enjoyed the food. Never got asked if we wanted anymore drinks either. Every table that was in at the same time was left with dirty plates for way too long, there was no atmosphere, tables are so close and it was so quiet that we could hear about 4 conversations and when sitting down and getting up, had to squeeze between ours and the couple next to ours tables.

Paid the bill in full (including the pasta that was uneaten) and left hungry. Big group of people outside discussing how they had a bad experience as well which we overheard when walking to the car. Would never come here again. Biggest waste of money I’ve ever spent.

All in all, service needs fixing as our waitress was nice but just wanted us in and out. Spent all her time talking to one table for 30 mins whilst we waited to order and were never asked if we enjoyed our food. Food needs some taste to it. I don’t know if something was missing from the dish because every other site has exceptional food, but this tasted like dish water and half the sauce was congealed in clumps to the dish.

We weren’t given any chance to complain/reorder food when at the venue which is disappointing because I have never sent food back before, never complained and never left a negative review, but the...

I have been recommended to visit this restaurant as a top class venue. The welcome was at best grumpy, but I would say it was great to have a little box for our dog. We ordered starters and mains and after 35 minutes, the starters had not arrived. We were then advised that the ravioli had been dropped and therefore a new dish needed to be made which would be on its way soon. This arrived after a further 10 minutes with the other starter. My wife was just about to put a lovely succulent piece of pork skewer into her mouth when we noticed a huge dead horse fly on the meat. As there were no service available to come to the table, I took it back to the pass and was told “not a problem we will cook you another one”. Eventually, one hour and 10 minutes and we received our starters, however I would say that we were very cautious in eating them. The restaurant manager did speak to us and offered us two free drinks but didn’t seem to understand the seriousness of flies or other objects in the food and suggested the solution may be to put more fly exterminators up in the kitchens. I pointed out that maybe it would be a good idea to have someone to check the food before it left the kitchen and she replied that they normally do but they were a member of staff down so that wasn’t possible. Having finished our main course and with a wallet lying on the table and then took a several attempts and around 20 minutes to attract the attention of someone to pay our bill. We weren’t charged for the starters, but the meal was still in excess of £70 and service was automatically charged to the bill. Just as a suggestion going forward I would say that when something that bad has happened with the food it might be a good idea to provide the whole meal free of charge with an apology and then this review would have reflected more on a few cases of human error rather than Still trying to profit from something that was appalling. Having done my own research paragraph group and the Willow seem to have a very good reputation in the area which boats well for future profitability. However if this rot continues that can very very quickly change as one adverse experience actually affect 50 potential clients. Finally, you can see a fly, but you can’t see any other kind of food hygiene issues and both myself and my partner had diarrhoea...