Harvester Kings Head Frimley Green — Restaurant in Surrey Heath

Absolutely TERRIBLE! I ordered 3 drinks while my sis has gone to get something from the car. When the staff came back she only had 2 drinks and saw there were 3 of us. Looking down on us and said SARCASTICALLY “OH!? THERE’S 3 OF YOU AND YOU ONLY ORDERED 2 DRINKS!!?” I ignored her words and tone of voice and said I ordered 1 Pepsi and 2 Pepsi max. Waited for quite awhile for her to come back to take our order. As we haven’t been to this Harvester for some time due to change of location and just visiting our parents, we did not know the changes. For Salad bar, before customers can help themselves once they have sat down and ordered drinks but it’s different now, we have to wait for the staff to give the bowl and make the order. HOWEVER, the same lady who was serving us, SHOUTED at my brother ACROSS the restaurant and said “YOU CAN’T GET THE SALAD, YOU HAVE TO ORDER!!!!” We were shocked as well as the people who were sat next to our table us. She should have came over to my brother to inform him and in a proper manner. I work in Hotel Industry and this is UNACCEPTABLE!!! VERY BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE!!! Who would want to be shouted at, as if it seems we were there to steal and not pay!? First of all, she should have came and said “apologies but we will need to take order first and give the bowl for the salad bar, I’ll come over to your table if you’re ready to order. BUT NO! When my brother came back, of course he was UNHAPPY WITH HOW HE HAS BEEN TREATED. My brother said you don’t have to shout from across and the staff was very confrontational, she said “EXCUSE ME WHAT ARE YOU SAYING!? DON’T BE RUDE!!!” With her eyebrows raised and leaned back as if she was surprise of our reaction because of her ACTIONS. She repeated with AN AGGRESSIVE voice this time “NO! NO! WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY!” My brother then, said you were the one being rude earlier, you could have came over and said it nicely. The staff did not stop and tried to justify her actions. As we were hungry, my brother just said, look we are here to eat, we would like to order. She did not stop and said she will GET HER MANAGER! We told the manager what happened and he apologised and said maybe it came across differently to us. We said no, she was all lovely to all other customers she was serving around us but she was spoke differently to us. (Note-: We are asians and all other customers were English). He asked if we want to be served by a different staff and we said, yes please. NOW, while we were eating having our lunch at around 12-1pm on 2nd October 2024. I noticed the staff (the lady) has been GLARING AT US especially at my brother in between of her taking orders from the other tables. My brother have noticed as well and told us. IT WAS VERY UPSETTING TO THE POINT WE COULD NOT EAT PROPERLY BECAUSE WE HAVE LOSS OUR APPETITE DUE TO THIS DISGUSTING BEHAVIOUR!!! I asked the manager to speak with me in private, and she glared at me when she heard this. I told the manager, how his staff (the lady) has made us felt (horrible). We came here to eat and enjoy our lunch, not to be treated this way. I told the manager, this is VERY DEGRADING. How she treated us was different to others. I told the manager, do you know how we feel and how we see this???? Of course the manager, apologised and said again, it could have come across differently. I said no, SHE IS RACIST. We are not asking to be treated special. The Manager said, he will speak to his staff. TO THE OWNER OF HARVESTER FRIMLEY GREEN-: Please kindly look into this matter, it is unacceptable to have staff who mistreats your customers. We used to come here often and your staff has always been great and lovely! And we have never encountered racial discrimination at your restaurant until yesterday. I had breakfast with several aunties and uncles this morning and mentioned them about what happened. They told me they have encountered the same with a certain staff not just once. When they described the staff, we found out IT WAS THE SAME PERSON. The staff (lady) was more on the overweight side, blonde hair...

To set the scene, I attended a pre-booked meal on Father's Day. It was extremely busy and the restaurant was running behind. We were a table of 3, so it wasn't a large table to manage.

This was a tough review to write. Having worked in the industry in the past, I fully appreciate the challenges associated with occasions like this; it's not easy! However the reason for my review today was because I wanted to share a positive experience from the day. When we arrived, the team were clearly busy and left us waiting at the door for a bit longer than you'd expect. One person did let us know we'd be tended to soon, but this seemed like more of a tick box exercise and they weren't particularly charismatic. After this, a fantastic member of staff (Autumn) came over with a smile on her face and apologised for the fact they were running behind. She asked if we'd be happy to sit at the bar while they prepared a table for us, pointed out which table they was going to prepare, asked if that table was okay and apologised again for the delay. She wasn't our waitress, but came to get us and seat us once the table was ready and let us know who our waitress would be. We were sat right by the entrance and phone, which was ringing off of the hook for most of the time.

Following this and throughout the meal, we noticed Autumn almost running around to try and meet the needs of all of the customers (don't worry, she wasn't quite running, but working at pace as quickly as safely possible), also greeting customers at the door and answering the phone. Every other person ignored the phone for the 2.5 hours we were there. We were really impressed to see how hard Autumn was working. She was working at 100% capacity and continued to do it with a smile on her face, being polite, professional and engaging with customers the whole time.

After our meal, I felt the need to catch Autumn's attention to ask her for her name (explaining that we noticed how hard she was working and how amazing she'd been). I let her know I'd be writing a review, so I really hope this feedback gets passed on to her manager and also to Autumn herself.

With regards to the things that I believe were within the control of the team, I do have a couple of pieces of feedback:

FOOD QUALITY - the chicken gravy with the half chicken was not the same as it usually was. It was like dirty dish water...thin, watery and not with a nice flavour. Also, the corn on the cob was just about acceptable, but clearly either boiled or microwaved. I'm positive that when I've attended other Harvester restaurants, they've grilled the corn and provided a butter sachet to season it. This makes a huge difference as boiled/microwaved corn is watery and lacks flavour. The other meals we had were fine and the salad cart was well stocked with fresh salad. The only downside there was the lettuce was a bit brown, but probably okay to eat still.

SERVICE - I've covered this above

ATMOSPHERE - This wasn't great. I believe this was down to the fact it was Father's Day and we were sat with queues of people at the front door looking at us, with the restaurant phone ringing constantly (and very loudly) in our ears. It was quite hectic and not ideal. As I said, I appreciate it's a tough day, but maybe some better planning with additional staff would have helped the team manage the restaurant more effectively.

TL;DR In summary, a busy and tough day for the restaurant team, who I believe could take a page out of Autumn's book, to make the experience more enjoyable for the customers. Some additional planning and more staff on commercially busy days...

This visit was an okay visit. Not the best one we've had. The gentleman who took us to our tables was polite and friendly he also brought us our drinks, again, very respectful.

The first table we were put onto was very sticky and ideally we would have liked a booth. So we asked the gentleman who was serving us if we could move, he was new so he asked the manager (michelle) who at the beggining of our interactions wasn't overly friendly, this being that when we asked if we could move to another table, pointing to one that was free, her response was one that gave the impression she didn't want us to have it, however she stated that it was reserved for a booking of 6. Okay fair enough, so we asked If another one was free, upon her walking away, she went passed another staff member and obviously said something, as that staff members face was one of yikes. So improvement there needs to be that management need to not make comments about their guests!

However the manager came back, with a bit better body language and positiveness than before and allowed us to sit at the "reserved table for 6" as she's moved them to our current table which has 4 chairs 🤷‍♀️.

The waiter that served us was alright, very robotish, totally understand he was prob nervous being new.

Our food came out super quick, a bit too quick, kinda felt rushed to leave. We had only been sat for 5 minutes with our salad bowls.

The food wasn't the usual standard we've had previously. The kids fish fingers tasted very lemony 🤷‍♀️, they were inedible. The ribs were very small and looked anemic too. All chips from all meals weren't overly nice, but edible.

I had some onion rings that were very inedible, I asked for them to be removed from the bill as didn't eat them infact couldn't eat them. One bite into them and they dripped oil all over my leg. They were all like this, which I showed the waiter. Greatfully they were removed from the bill.

I was still eating my food, when the waiter came over and started clearing the kids plates. Which made me feel very awkward and made me rush the last bit of my food.

That wasn't nice. That made us feel rushed to leave.

I want to mention that when the "table of 6" arrived during our food, they were sat at our previous table which i was told the manager just swapped us, when in fact that table only had 3 guests?. So the manager lied to us because she didn't want to lose a table of 6 to a table of 4 (us). Which i do understand however if the guests aren't happy it's common knowledge and courtesy to help find them a replaceable clean table.

All the tables were sticky, so whether that's the cleaning stuff of lack of I don't know but 2 other tables made comments also.

Overall the experience was okay. Not amazing, we've had...