The Old Farmhouse forgets families
The Old Farmhouse
Trendlewood Road
Nailsea
Sunday 1st February
Finding a traditional Sunday Roast in parts of Wraxall and Nailsea seem to be as rare as a baby who sleeps through the night.
Avoiding the Battle Axes, Wraxall, after their leaking toilet incident, finding The Barn apparently shut, and the Royal Oak no longer doing food, we decided to try out The Old Farmhouse for some family friendly dining.
What we found was a confusing mess of staff, and quite possibly the worst customer service experience possible since the BT episode.
On arrival, we were shown to a table that was dirty, salt encrusted with remnants of the previous occupants vegetables. No attempt was made to wipe the disgusting residue off.
We requested a baby seat, which was presented quite promptly albeit with a broken tray. It was missing one of the clips holding it to the arms, and though this was not a safety feature it was not entirely impressive.
The Old Farmhouse website invites you to:
“The new dining area, we are pleased to be able to offer full table service, so please relax and let us bring everything to you. Please talk to one of the waiting staff who will be happy to ensure your evening is a pleasurable as possible.”
So. We sat back and waited for table service. In fact we waited for anyone at all. We were not offered a menu, and our own personal search for a menu proved fruitless.
Eventually we hailed a passing member of staff who went off in search of some. When they came back they only had the one, and said they would go off and try and find another one.
When another one eventually turned up it was dropped down on the table and that was the last we saw of anybody.
We wanted the roast dinner that everyone appeared to be consuming, but we could find no mention of this on the menu. We were confused, upset, with a hungry child who was becoming more and more restless as time passed.
No one came back to take our order. At this point no one had even bothered to come and see if we wanted drinks. Despite sitting at the table right outside the bar, we were apparently totally invisible.
Now, we are well aware that Sunday lunchtimes can be busy times, but twenty minutes after we had sat down we had received one menu at our own request, no table service at all, no one had bothered to even take a drinks order. Then a small group of people came into the venue without reservation, were shown to a table, and had their drinks and food orders taken before they had even had a chance to take their coats off.
Two other customers who came in at the same time as us were quite happily menu endowed straight away, and were busy consuming their drinks.
Being completely ignored to the point of rudeness by an entire staff is just not acceptable, so we asked ourselves: Is this the kind of place we would like to spend our money? The answer of course was no, so we left.
The Old Farmhouse managed to ruin what could have been a special occasion with their non-existent table service. We were quite disgusted with the whole affair and wondered what was quite so wrong with us that we were not worth bothering with.
The Old Farmhouse claim to have created a ‘something for everyone’ approach, but they did not even bother to create one for this family.