Matt the Miller's Tavern — Restaurant in West Chester Township

Today (11/16/24) we dined in the West Chester location. We had a large party for a wedding party proposal. There is several issues that we encountered during our visit. Some of the issues were minor while some were unprofessional and embarrassing. Our food came out in the weirdest order possible. Some guests didn't receive their appetizer until after their entrée had been consumed. All of the kids meals were served very last. Majority of the adults had already consumed their food and the children were crying about not receiving their food. Even though the plates were hot the food was cold. Refills weren't offered even though 90% of the guests cups were empty. An issue ensued amongst the guests and one of the guest wanted to leave the room and obtain his own table or booth away from the group. The manager overheard this request being mentioned and she had a nasty facial expression and said the guest would not be receiving a table. I'm confused on why the guest was not permitted to wait until a table was available to move but the manager was not in agreement and was not interested in entertaining the idea of accommodating the request. I feel like the manager's response was very unprofessional. When it was time for everyone to receive their bill a gratuity was written on each bill but when the credit cards were ran they only charged the bill total minus the gratuity. The tip section was left blank for each guest to enter their desired tip amount. This is where things became extremely unprofessional. When the servers passed out the bills no one was instructed to enter the amount of gratuity that was written on the original bill. Guests were saying that if we wrote anything additional on the bill then basically we tipped twice. Then another guest received his bill after his card was swiped and the server had wrote in the gratuity and signed the check for him. So we had to tell the server to print him a new check so that he can sign it himself. I asked my server about the double tipping and she advised me that they will charge my card for the amount that they wrote on my original bill and basically will override the amount I had entered and signed for which I believe is unacceptable. There was a difference of $7.25 and I was okay with paying that amount if I needed to however I was not ok with them taking whatever amount they wanted without my permission. When I asked the server how this was possible she advised me that the person who booked the room authorized them to charge whatever they want on our cards. I advised the server that no one has authorization to make decisions for my credit card other than myself and they are only authorized to take what I signed for. The server walked away and the manager began speaking to me. The manager was rude and unprofessional. She basically came into the conversation with the same attitude she had about the guest getting a separate table. She the manager told me they can authorized whatever amount they want to on my card. 🤔. Then the manager asked another employee to retrieve the server and she advised her that the server does not want to return to the conversation. The manager then states that she understands that she is frightened and then proceeds to attempt to remove me from the area by saying we cannot have this conversation in front of other customers or cause a scene. Throughout this entire process I was calm and respectful but after she made that statement I was offended and upset. I left immediately because I didn't want to become the angry black woman she was portraying me to be. Afterwards a guest told me that she paid cash and only paid the bill amount and not the gratuity listed on the bill. That wasn't fair to the group. At other restaurants a gratuity is automatically added to a final bill but that didn't happen tonight. Matt the Miller needs to update their equipment to properly bill accordingly and the drama tonight could have...

Let's start with the good. The mixed drink my fiancee ordered was great, and our waitress did their best to work as fast & effectively as possible.

However, I do feel as though 3 out of 5 stars is a very fair (and perhaps generous) review.

The place was understaffed and the staff that were there were visibly stressed. Their stress showed most prominently in how they conversed with guests and each other. I do not blame the staff for being stressed as they were very busy. However, I do believe that this restaurant needs to find more staffing in order to assist in the overall workflow and provide customers (as well as their staff) with a better experience. I know that adding on staff is hard for some businesses to do, especially currently. However, the stress on the staff provided such a significant decrease in the quality of the experience of eating here that I felt it necessary to include.

Our order was water & a blueberry basil (vodka based drink) for beverages. As an appetizer we ordered the "world famous" pretzels. I ordered the Matt's Burger & my fiancee ordered the Honey Crispy Sandwich.

The "world famous" pretzels tasted like cheap garlic sticks. The fries, sweet potato fries, and buns (on our hamburger & chicken sandwich) tasted like they were soaked in butter & oil. Additionally, it took almost 2 hours to receive our entrees. I am sure that the low quality in food and long wait correlated with the low staffing issue. However it also felt necessary to include in this review.

To clarify, the food wasn't inedible. But I have had microwavable food that tasted much better before. Both my fiancee and I were very hungry (especially by the time the entrees came) and did eat most of our food. I dislike wasting food and even took my leftovers (about half the burger & half the sweet potato fries). I had considered removing the bun from the burger & using paper towel to soak up the grease from the fries. But both my fiancee & I felt sick about an hour after leaving the restaurant and the next day we still aren't feeling our best. So, I have elected to throw the leftovers away.

We did not complain at the restaurant, as we did not want to add any more stress to staff and were uninterested in any discount/offer that may come with a complaint. I am solely writing this honest review here so that the management of this company can see this feedback and take it from there.

There are several other glowing reviews, and I wish I had one to add to those. I am unsure if that is atypical for the restaurant, as it was my only time there. I do not plan on coming again to find out...

Genuinely some of the worst service I’ve ever experience. I schedule a reservation for Valentine’s Day for me and my girlfriend. When I made this reservation it gave me two selections one for a valentines specific menu and the other with the entire menu open. I chose the one with the open menu because the valentines menu only had steak and fish for entrees two things my girlfriend doesn’t eat. When we arrived they only handed us the valentines menus. I was understandably confused and brought this up to our waitress who responded to me “no you can’t order anything else but if you want to leave that’s fine.” As someone who works in the service industry I found telling your customer they can leave absolutely ridiculous. We decided to stay because it was Valentine’s Day and we figured we wouldn’t be able to find another restaurant that would take us. What we had decide to order was she would take the first course which would be soup and I ordered the filet. I had asked the waitress if we could get them at the same time I figured that wouldn’t be too much to ask for and it would be nice to eat together since she was getting a main course. She rolled her eyes at the question and reluctantly agreed to do so. We had gotten the food within 5 minutes of ordering and it didn’t taste fresh we assume that it was probably pre made and just sitting in a warmer. I will give Matt the Millers this the food was good. However, while eating the food out waitress didn’t check on us once, even though we had made eye contact multiple times. This was frustrating as my girlfriend was wanting to order a drink while we ate. She had finally came up to us after we had finished the food letting us know about our options for our dessert. We ordered and she dropped off the cake but, yet again never check on us until she quickly dropped off the bill.

I would like to state that we are both not the type of people to complain little things and if the service was kind about this misunderstanding I would never have posted this. However the complete lack of respect treating us as if we should just have gotten up and left was utterly disgusting and ruined our...