TGI Fridays - Ashton-under-Lyne — Restaurant in Tameside

Service! We went in for my sons birthday, as we were walking in there was a couple stood waiting to be seated and a little girl stood next to them. After a few minutes a waiter approached, looked confused and spoke to the little girl, she wasn’t with the couple and skipped off when he responded to her. He ignored the couple and they turned around and left, they looked annoyed. We stepped forwards and 3 waiters were stood there looking like deer in headlights, 1 stepped forward & we asked for a table for 3, he looked confused, grabbed 3 menus and said follow me, then stopped, looked at the original waiter and the other waiter grabbed the menus to seat us. He went to put us in a window seat with blinding sun so we asked to move.

This was all really weird honestly. Was it entirely new staff?

He said it was QR code ordering, we’ve had this before so said cool and sat down. We’re picking starters and drinks to order and a lady comes over and introduces herself as the general manager, says they’ve brought in a QR code as they had complaints of food orders being wrong or taking too long. Fair enough! We order and wait…. 20 minutes from ordering the manager comes back over and asks if we’re waiting for anything and we say yes, drinks. She pops off and brings them to us from where they were sat on the bar. We get the starters about 10 minutes after this, 30 minutes after ordering. While we were waiting on the drinks still, we ordered our mains, it was a 40 minute wait for those. So this QR system doesn't seem to be speeding anything up. Anytime we got anything it was because the manager checked in if we were waiting on anything. I was a waitress myself for a decade, and a manager, she was the only person there with the rush on, also not her job when she should have been able to delegate.

The food itself! As starters we ordered the vegan stuffed potato skins which are freaking delicious, expensive for only 3 half skins that are so empty they’re concave though & the boneless wings in a legendary glaze which were yum. For mains we had the vegan fajitas, smashed cheeseburger and New York grill with Sirloin. Firstly £20+ for a burger is enough that it had better be a good burger, it was “eh bout same as McDonalds” apparently. Partner paid £30 for the New York deli, as said the wait was 40 minutes and it must have spent most that time under the hot lamp because his plastic pot of sauce had melted on the plate and spread out across it. He didn’t even know there was a pot under there until the end! His meal was also “eh”. My vegan fajitas didn’t come with the other mains, I was brought a side plate with 3 tiny clear plastic cups with a tablespoon each of spicy salsa, a tomato sauce and a guacamole salad in and another side plate with wraps. I was told the rest would be sent soon and waited another 5 mins. The fajitas were tasteless. I genuinely couldn’t taste a hint of the usual fajita spices on there, it was mush. The tablespoon of guacamole didn’t go beyond two wraps and there was no sour cream, wish I’d spotted that before ordering! All of the food we received in both courses was just warm.

Son ordered a s’mores sundae for dessert which is supposed to come with a toasted marshmallow topping, it was halfway through that we all glanced at the menu and realised it didn’t arrive with the marshmallow. I went to tell a waitress who asked if we wanted something else but we were leaving, we’d been there 90 minutes and just wanted to go home.

We’ve found something missing every meal we’ve had at this TGI, our last visit my vegan burger came without the large mushroom. I asked after it arrived why it wasn’t there and was told it was out of stock, they didn’t tell me that as I was ordering or before bringing it. This is why I went for fajitas this time.

Nail in the coffin. We spent £145 for this visit and the food was “eh” and stingy, won’t be back.

You can get stunning food in Manchester City Center for half this. 2nd star is for the manager, aside from her service it was entirely...

Use to love going to TGI Fridays and was gutted when they closed down their manchester city centre branch. Decided to try this one as it was the next closest to me. Went on a Saturday night expecting it to be quite busy. We got there around 9pm and the place was dead there was like 6 other people if that in the place. The atmosphere was awful. We where taken to our table and given our menus and then was just forgotten about, 15 minutes later our waitress came running over and apologised and forgot we where here even though there literally wasn't anyone else here. We started to order food and straight away was told they had run out of alot of items due to being busy? Yet the place was dead. Was told there was no chicken only the chicken strips so as one of us went to order the "Ultimate American grill" we where told we couldn't as all they had was the steak. So we could only order the "New York strip" then I just ordered the chicken strips. Went to order drinks then once the order had gone to the bar another waiter came running over to say unfortunately we couldn't have a pina colada cocktail as they didn't have any stuff left. So at this point we where getting really annoyed but settled for just getting a soft drink. Then our waitress came back to the table as she had forgotten to ask what sauce was wanted for the steak. So we let her know. By now we where both just sat looking at each other wondering what the heck was going on. Eventually our food was brought out and the New York Strip looked a disgrace the lettuce on the plate was half black and mouldy and when we tried to pull the waitress who brought it over she claimed she hadn't got her glasses on and couldn't see it properly? Not sure if she was being sarcastic or what? So she wondered off and nothing was done about it. As we started to eat our meals I realised that the sauce for the steak hadn't even been brought over that was included in the meal. We where going to say something but didn't see the point and seemed a waste of time. Half way through our meal a waiter comes running over interrupting us and asking how we where paying for the bill??? Which was beyond rude as we hadn't even finished our meal? We weren't even given a chance to order anymore drinks either or a dessert. We ended up being the last 2 people in the whole restaurant by this point. We had seen a few other people come in and then just turn around and leave due to the restaurant being so quiet and dead. As soon as we had finished our mains our waitress comes back over asking how we where paying again as they want us to leave so they can cash up. Iv honestly never received such rude and bad service at a TGI Fridays before ever. We couldn't wait to just leave that place. We definitely won't be returning after such a...

In a word - DIRE!

2 Stars for the 3 lovely staff our paarty encountered

But firstly we had an unfathomable wait for a wheelchair friendly table in a not very busy establishment.

Then our genius son's drink took an age to arrive, when everyone else had theirs,

Add to that the server decided to refresh son's drink when it wasn't empty and didn't ask or give him a chance to decide said top up, when he got it back he thought it tasted sweeter somehow & didn't like it anymore.

3 of the party chose corn dogs to start, which they regretted in hindsight.

I chose guac and chips which was quite nice but I did find the cajun spiced totilla 'chips'rather too fiery for my 3rd generation Anglo-Indian palate (chemically hot really)but the guacamole was good and worked well with them.

I ordered the cob salad with a couple of extras : blue cheese dressing and crispy chicken.

It took some time for them to tell me that they couldn't provide me with this and I had to choose something else,

My choice of alternative was the honey glazed seseme chicken strips, which weren't hot enough upon arrival and positively stony cold by time of finishing my plate. The accompanying salad was miniscule and quite a few of the fries black and unpalatable, I know that the treatment of potatoes during and after harvesting can cause this blighted taste, and thankfully it wasn't all of the fries, but then I didn't eat an awful lot of them.

Our daughter celebrating her great 9 GCSE + 2B tech results today didn't like the fact that the chicken burger she'd chosen wasn't a burger but several chicken tenders on a too sweet bun, in fact all who'd ordered burgers said that their burger buns were far too sweet.

Overall we paid far too much money for a dinner in a place with awful music playing, serving awful overpriced tepid so called 'food'.

None of us enjoyed the experience, but we laughed because it's all a learning curve isn't it? Never again!

My memories of the brand are from when I used to frequent the the TGI Fridays up the Chester Rd in Sale with colleagues from the German engineering company we all were working with based in a nearby trading estate, mostly just drinks, but those memories are now blighted (like the fries)by tonight's experience.

I actually feel quite queasy as a consequence and really wish that we'd have given the Steakhouse, 5 guys, Wagamama, Nandos, Chiquito, on the same site, or anywhere else in the vicinity like The Sheldon even our £150 (that's with the results day celebration discount code) for nauseating food and disappointment for 2 kids 2 adults, really wouldn't have minded if the food had been good, not even great, just not...