Gordon Ramsey would be disgusted! (Harvester Pub & Grill)

Member Name: Claribella

Product:	Harvester Pub & Grill
Date:	23/05/09 (61 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap and the salad bar is nice

Disadvantages: Rubbish customer service and slapped-ash.

We have one of these pubs very nearby our house and used to visit it quite often until recently. The place is a pub but at our local you have the restaurant on one side and the bar on the other.

The place tends to get extremely busy and we have on occasions have been told that there is an hours wait for a table. This is all well and good if you are two adults waiting to eat but with two young children under two and a half, it's just not practical to try and keep them entertained for an hour enven before you've been seated. This one of the main reasons that we have stopped visiting the place.

They have an extensive menu with lots to choose from. They do anything from a baked potato to a mixed grill and chicken portions coated in various sauces to pasta.

The main appeal for me is the salad bar. Quite a lot of the meals come with the free salad bar which you can eat as much as you like of. It's a self-serve sysem so you go up, grab a plate and fill it high. It's very similar to Pizza hut's salad and you can pick up anythig from a warm roll to beetroot and shredded carrot to croutons. There are also various dressing to pour over the top if you fancy that sort of thing. Everything is really fresh and you constantly see the staff replenishing it throughout the duration of your meal which is quite nice because you know that nothing has been sat there for hours. The only down side to the salad is that it's very easy to fill up on it before you meal has arrived and then I find that I'm not too bothered about the meal that I ordered.

If you pay a visit to the place before 6.30pm then you will qualify for the earlybird menu which means everything is around half the price. I have to say that I would never go after this time because th food is definately not worth paying full price for.

If you are looking for a fancy meal then this is definately not the place to come. The food is cheap and cheerful but it kind of has a slapped ashness to it. The food looks like it has been chucked on the plate in a massive rush which in reality it probably has because it's always pretty packed, especially at the weekends.

I did have a very bad experience with a dish when I was pregnant with my first child. I ordered a chicken dish and as I got half way through I realised that the chicken was practically raw as I got nearer to the bone. It wasn't just pink it was raw. Obviously this was very worrying considering I was six months pregnant. I explained all of this to the staff and they got me another chicken but I would have liked a discount really which I was too shy to push for.

Over all this is a mediocre place to eat out with average customer service and average food. I don't think I would go back and much prefer Pizza hut where the food is of a higher standard and you will pay around the same price.

Summary: There's definately better places to eat out.