We visited Groves one weekday morning, myself, hubs and three friends. Our aim was to have a treat as all the children had returned to school. So we headed in for breakfast.
It was a TOTAL nightmare from start to finish! It was not very busy, probably only 6 tables occupied, but we had to wait for almost an hour for our food to arrive. The wait would not of been an issue, if only the food had been, well appetising, hot, cooked, unburnt .... we each had two fried eggs, each of us had one that was so overcooked that it could easily of been used as a frisbee. I have never before seen a fried egg that needed a steak knife to cut it! The second egg was so underdone the white was still runny. The bacon had been flash fried, and we were most surprised that it didn't run off the plate. Sausages were cooked .... but cold ... as was the rest of the meal. We were also missing tomato's, pointed this out to the bar staff, who went off to get them, returning a few minutes later to inform us that they had no tomatoes, but we could have an extra egg/mushroom or black pudding of we wanted. This was said in a very stroppy tone, well pardon is for wanting what we had paid for! Despite me reminding the barstaff that I am extremely allregic to mushrooms, she still presented me with an egg nestling next to a mushroom.... so that was something else I was unable to eat.
The toast went to a whole new level in incompetence and poor 'cooking' skills. We were handed a large plate full of it, the outer pieces were toasted one side , the pieces in the middle were not toasted at all, and were in fact ... bread.
Feeling thouroughly fed up by now, we approached the bar and asked to speak to the duty manager. She was busy in the kitchen apparently, but we were ofered a cup of tea whilst we waited. I pointed out there were five of us, the bar girl totally ignored me and presented us with one cup of tea ....
Eventually the duty supervisor arrived, she was rude, aggresive and stroppy in the extreme. She blamed it all on a staff member turning up for work in tears and refusing to work. If that was the case why not either a) send her home and ring another member of staff to come in or b) inform the customers to expect a long wait, giving them an option of refund if needed.
After my friend continually pushed the point for some ten minutes, we were very begrudgingly given a refund.
Sadly, I am not prepared to risk a second visit to test if this was merely a one off, especially as a comment from another friend, who also happened to visit the Groves that morning was ' well its never good but its not usually quite that bad' Sad when a town centre venue, that could have such a huge trade from local offices, is measured simply by the degree of badness. Wetherspoons who own this venue along with two others in Swindon town centre would be well advised to investigate!
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