Harvester Horse & Groom Polegate — Restaurant in Wealden

The last two times I have been here, this place has been right proper rubbish.

The last time was just abysmal, salad bar half depleted, as in, empty containers, no potato salad, no pasta salad, bit of lettuce left in the bottom, no sweetcorn, empty topping jars, and various other containers half empty, also, the bread/sauce section, no plates, almost no butter/spread, at least one jar of sauce was almost empty, and others well depeleted, missing sauces from the shelves too, and to top it off, the bread was crap too.

What made it all worse, it was not even that busy (and no this was not a case of being understaffed, which I know does happen and which is sometimes a genuine reason), and no one came out to the salad bar until I was over half way through my crappy meal, which as a good half hour later, it should have be done a long time before this, and I cannot understand why the waiting staff had not mentioned it to the kitchen crew, nor why the kitchen crew had not been out to check, obviously nobody thought it was worth bothering with.

Added to this, the food was trash, overcooked steak, over cooked sausages, over cooked eggs, chicken that was like powder, soggy/cold chips, cold peas, warm slaw, clearly no love had gone into the effort at all and it had clearly sat under the heat lamps for too long, again, which I cannot grasp cos it was hardly busy.

It was clearly a, 'the manager was on a break moment', or the manager was simply somewhere else, prompting staff to do as little as possible, because almost all the staff were standing about chatting in the corner, behind the cooks counter etc, you could see them doing sweet FA when there were clearly things that needed doing and that should have been done and that should not require a prompt from customers.

It was clear that no one gave a crap about the salad bar or the bread/sauce section, nor much else by the resulting experience, and even when I mentioned there were no plates etc, which they got for me to be fair, it did not prompt anyone to come and check any of it nor anyone to take a look at the salad bar's lack of content.

New menu is crap, lost a couple or more favourites, some stuff has been reduced and in some cases a price increase too.

I wont be going back, it is firmly in the overpriced, sub-par and generally a bland experience catgegory now, and not worth the time, effort or the money, even the low-grade maccies at polegate is better than this and a fifth...

We dined in on Saturday 27th January, we didn't book but we got a table straight away, our waitress came over and took our orders which was all fine, UNTIL we got our food, we ordered some mains and from the childrens bigger appetites menu for our girls to share as 1 of them doesn't eat chicken and the other 1 doesn’t eat chips, we ordered the goujons and garlic bread. when it came, there were only 2 goujons and a very small handful of chips, and the garlic bread was just bread coated in oil and garlic ( which obviously they didnt eat as it was basically bread and dipping oil )The girl who brought our food out, I asked if it was the bigger portion as it looked as if it was for a smaller child and she went and checked. When she came back she said it was from the bigger menu, i was shocked! And said really?! Thats all you get, she replied with ' well yeah really ' I asked what would come if I had ordered off the smaller menu, and she was extremely rude! And kept continuing to be rude the whole time we were there. She kept coming over to the table while we were eating, asking if we had finished, she could clearly see we wasn't! We then got the bill and apparently she was unable to split the bill on a card machine, ( I've worked in hospitality for 10+ years) and it doesn't need to be split on a card machine you just type in the amount you wish to pay and split the seperate payments on the till bill. But she then made me walk upto the bar to pay whilst my baby was crying, I stood and waited for my receipt and she just looked at me and said ' what ' I said I wanted my receipt, She then came back to the table and let my friend pay there. Her manners and customer service Is absolutely appalling and needs to learn some manners! Food was mediocre and the steak had alot of fat on. We usually go here and it's always been lovely, we prefer it to the eastbourne 1, not sure if we...

Staff were okay but when you needed someone they were all having a meeting in q circle next to the till while all of us customers needed an order taking etc. Not only that, when we were 1st seated, and given the menus really quickly... i didn't even have time to comment to the member of staff before he walked away quickly how soaking wet the table was! The table had obviously just been cleaned but it was soaking wet. The menus were all sticky to the point they stuck to the wooden table! Couldn't get them back up.. we had only just veen sat down and a girl came to take our order, hadn't even had time to look qt the menu yet as i was soaking up thr qet table with all the napkins!! She then proceeded to not come back to us for a further 20 minutes..

Food then came, they got my sons meal conpletely wrong, didn't get what he asked for.. i Couldn't even eat my meal which was the buttermilk chicken flat bread. The flatbread was so hard and dry, it was disgusting! The chips were like cardboard, cold and dry. As were all of them on qll our meals! Then we couldn't even put salt on our chips as the shaker had no salt in it. Tried to look for a member of staff but they were having a 'meeting'.. so after watching them for 10 minutes, she eventually gave us some salt..

She took away our plates and asked if we wanted desert.. that was ok. Pretty nice to be honest.. then the bill came.. well what a palaver that was! No way was I paying for the mains. They were disgusting and not even edible. We didn't touch them. She said she could take one main meal off.. i wasn't accepting that.

Terrible service and terrible food! Will not be coming back again soon!

Oh and p.s... all the salad bar veg was disgusting.. it was filthy and not kept clean. Onions totally out of date, as was the cucumber.. not...