New Florence — Restaurant in Stoke-on-Trent

Booked on line for Mother's Day. In the week got a telephone call asking for a deposit so my table could be reserved. No problem paid the deposit. Set off hungry looking forward to a lovely Sunday lunch only to be told when we got there someone else has sat on our table which my I just say was reserved for us with a deposit taken. We noticed on each table reserved was a mother's day card with your name on and states reserved. So we were shown to another table which they hurriedly cleaned. Don't know what they clean their tables with but they are left all sticky and your hands stick to it and your sleeves. Tables reserved had table napkins and cutlery set out. Our cutlery and napkins were put in a what looked like a painted plant pot and shuffed on the table. May I point out at this stage there was no apology for letting someone have our table. The girl who showed us to our table just said you have an hour and a half. We paid for our carvery,s then and went to get our food. Well what a let down. Instead of having nice slices of meat cut you got bits of meat. The cauliflower cheese was hard and you couldn't taste the cheese it was too dried up. The mashed potato just stuck to the spoon so was difficult to get off and the roasted parsnips had no taste. Needless to say half mine was left. So we thought we would have a pudding. We have sticky toffee pudding. It looked like chocolate pudding with a toffee sauce and my friend said hers tasted as if it was burned. It had a funny taste so she left half of that. And to top it all they advertise outside for alcohol free Guinness and they hadn't got any so all in all we didn't enjoy our time at Florence and certainly won't be going again. We will go back to Hem Heath which is also a Greene King pub but with much...

This is a bit of a long one....bare with me. Visited few months ago and had superb breakfast. Very sad to say, was NOT the same experience yesterday ! Due to the great visit last time, we decided to pop in again for my birthday breakfast 16th January. So, this was how it went.... We were literally the only 2 people in the place. Ordered 2 full breakfasts, teas, plus "unlimited toast". Breakfasts arrived, but toast was barely off-white and needed "toasting", so we politely asked the lady who served us if we could have toast, please, as it was almost still just 'bread'. She popped into the kitchen, which was only feet away from us. Unfortunately, not enough feet, it seemed....as we heard someone from the kitchen say "...get it toasted on one side and black on the other!", followed by laughter !!! As the lady came back from the kitchen she said to us "It'll just be a minute". To which I replied, "thankyou, and we'll take it without the sarcasm from the kitchen thanks, because we just wanted it 'toasted' !" She simply said "I'll have a word with him". No apology. Believe it or not, they didn't even bother to do fresh toast - they actually re-toasted the original 'toast'. OMG! So now it was actually more like a cracker. The butter didn't even melt on it. What a joke! Yes, I know. It's just TOAST. Don't think for a minute that I don't know how ridiculous this is. But remember - we're the ONLY ones in there, kitchen staff were down right rude, and we paid for "unlimited toast" (could've been awkward and just kept ordering more but we didn't). I believe the manageress on duty was told what had happened, but still just walked straight past us, not even acknowledging the whole fiasco. Good luck if you're thinking of going for breakfast here on a...

First visit and last!! Very bizarre experience in the less than 10minutes we were on site!! We arrived and were seated at our table. The young lady who we spoke on arrival explained they wasn’t currently taking orders from the Main Menu. We told her that was fine with us as we had come for a Carvery. She then let us know there was only gammon available, which again was perfect as that was all that we wanted. As it was our first time going, we queued at the bar to order but I took a menu with me to make sure I was ordering the correct extras for the Carverys. A member of the bar staff then told me they wasn’t taking food orders, I told her I had it for the Carvery menu, she then apologised and carried on serving the customer at the front of the queue (I was third in the queue.) The elderly lady in front of me then asked to order two Carverys to which she was told they wasn’t serving any food until the Chef has caught up!! There was nobody at all waiting at the servery. As I work in the food retail industry myself, I have cut off food orders or put a waiting time in place on multiple occasions, in order to allow us to catch up when food orders are coming in thick and fast. What I haven’t done is take bookings, seat my guests, update them on what is or isn’t available on the menu then proceed to tell them minutes later that they cannot have what I have offered them?!? I asked why they are taking bookings, allowing guests to arrive, and then seating them with no food available? I was told to discuss it with the manager who I looked for but the rest of my party had already walked out!! Shocking and almost ruined what turned out to be a lovely evening. Many thanks to The Peppermill for a...