Taybarns Wigan (Taybarns (Wigan))

Member Name: Mrs-LT

Product:	Taybarns (Wigan)
Date:	18/02/09 (1020 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Huge range of food, cheap

Disadvantages: Queues, rubbish service, poor training of staff

I have visited a couple of Taybarns restaurants and always found them to be an OK place to eat if you don't want to spend a lot of money. Not a great standard of food, but that is what you expect at an 'all you can eat' buffet. During the day the buffet (which includes a range of starters and desserts) costs just under £6, and this goes up to just under £8 in the evenings. You can also buy bottomless soft drinks which you refill as many times as you like which I believe cost £2, although I chose to buy drinks from the bar as I don't like coke, lemonade or any other type of fizzy pop. The drinks are what I would consider to be restaurant prices - more than you would pay in the average pub but not completely horrendous.

The Taybarns restaurants are easily identified as the exterior is painted bright orange (I feel very sorry for anyone living within sight of one, as I bet after its opening your property value took a considerable plummet) and to be honest they look like eyesores - not appealing at all, although you certainly can't miss them.

This restaurant is attached to the Wigan Marus Bridge Premier Inn and it used to be a Brewsters pub a few years ago, until it was replaced by the bright orange monstrosity that is Taybarns.

Taybarns is part of the Whitbread group, in case you're interested. This restaurant is located on the outskirts of Wigan, near Robin Park Retail Park and the JJB Stadium (literally a minute's walk away) so it should have good bus links. We travelled by car and the car park which is shared with the Premier Inn is absolutely massive so I would ever go as far as to say I guarantee you would have no trouble getting parked here.

There is a huge range of food offered and you can refill your plate as many times as you like. One thing I do like about Taybarns is that, unlike lots of all you can eat places, the cutlery is next to the island of plates and bowls rather than at your table so you don't need to save your knife and fork when you get your plate taken away, you can just pick up clean ones when you get a clean plate.

They do a bit of everything, and do nothing particularly well. They offer pasta, pizzas, chips, chicken, roast dinners (gammon or turkey), soup, salads, burgers, chinese, rice dishes, fruit crumble, chocolate cake, fruit salad and an ice cream factory...and I know I will have forgotten a few things too. The thing is, you can't pay less than £8 and expect to get Indian-quality Indian food, Chinese-quality Chinese food, Italian-quality Italian food etc. etc. all under one roof. I did not expect anything to be spectacularly delicious and my expectations were about right. However, it is cheap and cheerful and you are almost guaranteed to find something to suit everyone.

It is not a Michelin-starred restaurant but it serves a purpose and on the night we were there (Friday) is was absolutely packed so it is obviously very popular.

However, we did have some problems - one major and the others minor. I'll start with the minor things:

- You were literally queueing out of the door to get a table, and it took upwards of 30 minutes to be seated, yet only about 2/3 of the tables were full at any one time. They need to work on a much quicker turnaround at peak times.

- The service of drinks was horrifically slow, we waited 20 minutes then eventually went to the bar to collect them ourselves.

- All of the staff looked extremely young. I would be surprised if any were older than the age of 18. While young employees in a restaurant is not unusual I think there should be a better balance of young and older just to create a stronger sense of responsibility (more of how this caused a specific problem for us later in the review).

- The bar area is TINY. It would seat 10 people at the most, so it means you cannot stay for a drink after your meal, and there is nowhere nearby to move on to. This is the same in the 3 Taybarns restaurants I have visited.

- They do not have highchairs, they have booster seats which I personally am not keen on.

- A lot of the food, such as the penne bolognese, rhubarb crumble and the pizzas were really dry and overcooked.

- The food tends to be lukewarm rather than piping hot.

- They don't always replace things when they run out. They had ran out of chocolate fudge cake when we were there but did not put more out, they put apple pie out instead yet a lot of people were asking for the chocolate cake.

- And here is my major problem....I have left this until the end to try to give a fair picture of the restaurant as it does have good points.

A young waitress unloaded a full tray of drinks over my baby's head (literally directly above him). She put a full pint of beer and an empty glass with ice in down directly in front of him and he grabbed the glass of ice (thank god it was not the pint glass). This all happened in a split second, obviously I took it straight off him but what if he had knocked the pint glass over and it had smashed and cut him? While I was removing the glass from his hands she actually spilt a whole pint of beer over him, he was soaked from head to toe. I was so shocked I did not even complain, I simply left as I needed to get him cleaned up. If she had been older and more experienced I am sure she would have known a lot better but she did not seem to even understand the enormity of what she had done, and what could have happened. It was only by a fraction that the glass itself did not fall on his head - luckily it stayed on the tray. I kept thinking about what would have happened if the glass had fallen on him for days afterwards.

After this incident I doubt I would return, although I accept it was bad luck and I'm sure this is not a regular occurance. Our evening was completely ruined by it though.

I have rated Taybarns Wigan 2* due to bad training of staff, long queues and poor service. Other Taybarns I have visited I have not encountered these problems and would rate them 3 or 4* for the sheer choice of food and very reasonable price.

Summary: I would steer clear of this restaurant but Taybarns in general are pretty good