Harvester Trentham Lakes Stoke — Restaurant in Stoke-on-Trent

Harvester - Faulty Towers comes to mind - We were greeted by a lady with no name badge, then as we had someone with a disability we pre-booked requesting a booth, which un-named lady told us we couldn't have one. On taking us to our table we walked past two empty booths when we asked un-named lady she said they were already pre - booked. The waitress then took our drinks order but left her tablet on our table which we thought was odd she didn't return for it, after 25 minutes of waiting we asked if we could have our drinks and salad bowls to a new waitress, she then advised us that the last waitress went on her break. When the waitress came back from her break she seemed to be quite nice, clearly there are some issues at this site with management, the salad even looked drained and dry. To add insult to a disability, the 2 booths out of 3 remained clear for the duration of our visit. This is the worst restaurant for service and our total visit was 2 hours 20 minutes.

Food - the soured cream looked lumpy and yellow, when we returned it the "Chef" secretly disguised as a waitress advised this is how soured cream is meant to look, not that it had sat on the side for too long. This undercover individual later turned out to be none other than the manager called Gee ( not a surprise that the staff didn't want to smile )

The puddings we ordered 1 treacle pudding with custard which was tasty. 2 kids and 1 adult rocky horror sundaes, this was a horror experience, we each had the same tiny piece of brownie, which was over microwaved or just crusty with hardly any chocolate sauce in any of them maybe this is why it's called a horror pudding.

When the poor waitress asked at the end of the meal, did you enjoy your meal, we replied not really and asked who the manager was, she shyed away from saying until I asked again and she advised it was someone called Gee and described her.

The saving grace was the food was pretty standard and not terrible all in all which was good, although the service in general was the worst we have experienced at any Harvester we have visited, having to chase constantly to get our orders.

No surprise we won't visit this...

We both had a great meal. Staff very friendly and assisted with any needs. Nice atmosphere all around.. that was my last visit however...... Visited again today. Wow... Karen one of the managers greeted us. I asked for a padded seat as I have just had surgery. She said ok I have a table and asked us to follow. She walked so fast I lost her and my friend. My friend shouted my name and I went to the table. Shuffling seats and then she left. Ordered drinks and had to ask the staff where they were then finally they arrived. The table had legs and as I've had surgery I knocked them. Karen did not pay attention to someone that is disabled. I then went to the salad bar. I had to ask her for 2 items that were empty. I had to just sigh when I noticed the main sauces were empty so I just had what was left save any more hassle. After I went back to Karen who did not appreciate me asking for a simple request to move to a booth seat. As clearly free. She said "you didn't ask for a booth, yes it's available and started an argument regarding my wording of my request, which I replied I'm not playing word games can we move, she replied yes" so all in all bad management. We also had to chase our second drinks. Karen is a poor manager. Not keeping on top of the bare minimum of requirements for the customer and also the availability of the salad bar area. I'd be very happy for a reply to challenge my review as nothing could be said about this awful visit with attitude. In the wrong job I would say. Freedom of speech so get a grip on what you are supposed to do on shift like...

We visited last night after a day at Alton Towers. Thought we’d finish the day off with a treat meal. Two adults and two kids. We arrived at 8.30pm. The staff were absolutely useless. The server who came to take our drinks order didn’t know the price of the unlimited refill, so said she’d go and check. 20 minutes later she hadn’t returned! The waitresses just chatted by the salad bar and didn’t care about the customers at all. A different server came later to take our order. They got the order wrong, kept us waiting, didn’t check if our food was ok, and when we came to pay, it was really late because of the staff delays, so we wanted to get the kids to bed, but we had to ask 3 times to pay. It is worth saying that the food was lovely (albeit it the kids sides were all messed up, so we fixed that ourselves as didn’t want to wait for the staff to do it). The harvester should be a reliable chain to visit. You should know what to expect. Management needs to seriously take a look at the serving staff because they are letting this place down. They weren’t tidying the salad bar up either, so that was incredibly messy with stuff all mixed up. They weren’t replacing the empty stuff or even the plates by the bread rolls! So we had to eat those off serviettes. Given that the food was nice, it clearly isn’t the kitchen staff that are the problem. The restaurant was fine. But the service staff were the worse I’ve ever come across....