Booked a table of 7 for 6.30pm and we were seated about 6.40pm. Initially the waitress came quickly and took our drink and food orders and she seemed knowledgeable and attentive but this changed quickly. The water for the table never came. We waited about 45 minutes after the food order had been taken and our lettuce wedges were served. They were small and seemed to be just thrown in a bowl without the usual care and presentation you’d expect at Miiller and Carter. After over an hour of being seated the waitress hadn’t returned to take drink orders and we were really hungry by this point having only been served lettuce, it was impossible to get her attention and we had to ask another staff member who was waiting on other tables for a drink. Those drinks took about 20 minutes to come and the water was brought which I ordered about an hour and 20 minutes ago at this point.

After asking how long the food would be it came to the table about 1 hour 40 minutes after ordering it. One steak block was ordered as medium and came rare and medium rare so that wasn’t edible for one group member. The onion bargies were stone cold. Some of the steaks were fairly cold and generally the temperature of the food wasn’t hot enough. The ribeye we ordered was tough. 3 of the plates brought to the table were dirty. My plate had what looked like a piece of onion bhaji stuck to the bottom of it and the top of it was dirty too with food stuck on it. I asked for a new plate which never came and the dirty plate was removed so I was sat without a plate until I could get the waitresses attention, for which I had to stand up to get her to glance over to be able to ask for a plate to eat my food on. It was honestly ridiculous. Cutlery wasn’t brought including steak knives, we then had to wait for that when the food was sat there on the table. None of the lettuce wedge bowls and used cutlery were removed from the table. It was a shambles and it seemed like the longer we were there, the more awkward the waitress felt about the wait, lack of service, lack of drinks and the less eye contact she made with the table so it became impossible to get her attention to ask for anything. She seemed to be avoiding being anywhere near the table and we hadn’t complained to her, which I appreciate might have felt difficult for her and impacted on her waiting on the table (not that it should have as we were depending on her during our visit) but that wasn’t the case as we weren’t able to speak to her to and get her attention to ask about anything so I have no idea why she was avoiding our table.

It was so frustrating and what should have been an enjoyable birthday meal for my boyfriend became a really frustrating wait without food and drink and without the ability to get any kind of service from the waitress. We were left sat in a corner and the waitress came over 4 times during our time there in 2 hours. Two of which was to bring the bill and take payment, which she was extremely quick to take the money from the table; a level of speed which we had not witnessed at all the entire evening. We just had to try our best to get the attention of other waitresses as they walked past and it was all really poor.

The manager was good and took money off the bill when we complained about the lack of service, wait for food and the standard of food and offered to recook things but at this point we were so hungry and so fed up that we just wanted to eat and leave. Also, it doesn’t feel particularly comfortable to send food back once you’ve complained so it should have come out right the first time.

Our time was wasted and what should have been a lovely evening became a drawn out frustrating evening for the 7 of us but particularly for my boyfriend whose birthday it was. It was a shambles.