Wednesday 30 August 2017

A birthday meal disaster at Brewers Fayre.

In the past I have reviewed our local Brewers Fayre which I will come to in a moment.....Yesterday we visited for Ellie's 10th birthday.....The kids loves Brewers Fayre. Ours has an outside play area and an indoor soft play area too which is free. Stu and I love it because the kids go off and play and we can have a chat and a catch up.

I asked Ellie what she wanted to eat on her birthday and she said pancakes for breakfast and Brewers Fayre for dinner/tea. We went at about half past 1. We thought we would have a late lunch and an early dinner....We picked what we wanted off the menu and we were really looking forward to it.....


Last time we were there on a lunchtime we did not have a good time....My prown cocktail wasn't good, there was dirty glasses, mixed up meals and not enough staff....We went and reviewed Brewers Fayre a couple of years ago on an evening and it was brilliant. The food, service and everything. We had a fantastic time. I don't know whether that was because they knew I was coming to review or it was because we visited on an evening. I have a feeling now it was because it was an evening when we visited! 

I really don't want to come across as a moaning cow....If there was one, two or even three things to ruin our visit I wouldn't have been writing this post but our whole visit was a disaster.....

We arrived and the outdoor play area was closed for safety reasons (I don't know why) It was fine because it was quite chilly anyway.....We got in and were told there was a 30 minute wait for food which surprised me because there was hardly anyone there compared to what there usually is.....On the way to our seats we were also told there was no sausages? Well that messed Stu's plans up he was wanting the Ultimate Filled Yorkshire Sausage & Mash....lol

We looked through the menu and ordered our starters and main courses. Starters were a prawn cocktail for me, Garlic bread and cucumber for Ellie and a Combo Feast for Becky and Stu to share which looked amazing! 


The kids and Stu's starters were brought out and the waitress assumed that was it....I asked where the prawn cocktail was and she said it would be brought out soon as it wasn't on our order. It ruddy was! Stu had ordered it! Hmmf. It was brought along after about 20 minutes.

I tucked straight in....Got through one layer of prawns and hit lettuce....Eh? Every time I have eaten here the prawn cocktail has always been my favourite thing. It was about 90% lettuce and the lettuce wasn't even chopped. It felt like a handful of lettuce leaves was just stuffed into the glass.....There was also a lot less sauce than usual.


I let it go....There was a mistake and I had the main course to look forward too....Becky ordered Lasagne for her main, Ellie wanted a hot dog and I ordered scampi, chips and peas....Stu went for the mixed grill with an extra chicken breast instead of the sausages. Great!

The mains were brought out and we were asked if we wanted sauces. We all said yes and were given 4 sachets of tomato ketchup. I rolled my eyes. Yay one each. Enough for a couple of chips.

After a couple of minutes there was grumbles.....Becky said she didn't think her lasagne was cooked properly. After glancing up and looking it wasn't....It was missing cheese from half of it and feeling it the sheet of lasagne wasn't cooked on the right hand side. 


Ellie's hot dog was fine thankfully.....My meal was not. The chips were awful. On my plate half were under cooked, some overcooked, there was a few scabby rotten one's thrown in for good measure. Everyone else's chips were under cooked too. Ugh! 


It really put me off my meal. Years ago I had food poisoning from under cooked scampi. If the chips were under cooked the scampi could be too? So far I feel fine so I am guessing it was OK.

Stu is a big eater.....He will fill himself until he feels sick just to clear his plate and was really looking forward to the mixed grill. This is what he left which is not like him at all.....


The gammon was really, really salty, the chicken was really dry, the peas were cold and the steak was very, very chewy and of course he had under cooked chips too. They might look cooked but there was near enough raw potato in the middle which really puts you off eating. The only right part of the meal was the fried egg and onion rings. Ugh! 

The waitress was lovely when we complained and said she would pass our complaints on to the chef. She offered free desserts but we decided to skip it as I couldn't be bothered with another disappointment. We were not charged for our drinks or my starter as compensation.

We left way sooner than we would have if we had, had a nice meal.....I worked it out. I spent longer waiting for food than actually eating it. I put on a happy face for Ellie as it was her birthday treat but I ended up feeling angry about feeling angry about the messed up food....

It will be a long time before we go back to Brewers Fayre on a lunchtime.....

4 comments :

  1. Oh no, how disappointing. I have to say I've experienced disappointing lunches there too. We went to one for Toddler H's 2nd birthday and the service was abbissmal, so slow, and then I met friends at a different one last week and it was super slow too. Both times it was really empty. Had dinner at a different one this week and it was brilliant (I've only been these three times since November). Such a shame you had that experience for a birthday meal

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  2. So disappointing, and Ellie's birthday treat too :( We went to one on a review last year, it was a big event and lots of bloggers went. The service was amazing and the food lovely. We did have some problems in the play area as they'd gone and booked a party on the same day so it was really crowded. I decided to go back for a lunchtime treat, not a review, and the food took over an hour to arrive! The kids were going mental waiting. I sent them to the play area but they were hungry and didn't feel like playing. The food wasn't so good either, and there was stuff missing. We decided to skip desert too as we had been there over 2 hours already and it was only meant to be a quick lunch!

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  3. Oh no what a shame, when it was supposed to be a treat. We used to go a lot when the boys were very young because of the soft play but haven't been recently. I do vaguely recall that one of our group once got food poisoning there

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  4. Oh no that's such a shame. It's bad enough having a meal ruined but when it's a celebration it's sad too. I don't think I would have paid for my main meal either.

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