Christmas Day Lunch at The Manor House
Over the years my family and I have chosen Foxhills as the venue for special occasions. This has included my wedding, my parents wedding anniversary, birthdays and special family events. So when we were looking for somewhere special to celebrate Christmas Day there was really only one place which we felt could match our expectations. After all in your own brochure you state: ‘it’s all about getting together and having a good time with loved ones, celebrating in style and making it extra special.
We’ll once again be transforming our historic Manor House and 400-acre estate into a winter wonderland, providing a magical venue for your Christmas festivities and giving that all-important dash of elegance and glamour.’ Foxhills, Christmas Brochure 2024.
We chose your premium package for our Christmas Day lunch: The Manor House. As you can imagine for nine adults and one child this was not a minor expense…almost £1,500 just for the meal. But to be in the beautiful Manor House with its timeless decor and sumptuous surroundings, it was worth it for this special day. We booked as soon as the bookings opened in August.
Imagine then our horror on Christmas Day when we were led, in our coats, past the cloakroom and dining rooms to a soulless conference room. The bright overhead lights on, no ambiance, no music, no table decor, no character - just conference tables in full glaring light. Apparently this is the ‘Library’, except there are no books, pictures, lamps, chairs. Just plain walls, conference circular tables and conference seating. The large recessed lights bore down on us and the whole room was soulless. We even had to hang our own coats on the makeshift rail placed in the corner! Certainly not the ‘celebrating in style’ we were lead to believe we had booked
We deliberately did not choose the Golf Club offering, which was cheaper, because we wanted the ‘Manor House’ experience. Even the golf club offered a live pianist. When we said there was no atmosphere then someone brought their laptop and plugged it in to provide a Christmas playlist! It took three different members of our party to ask for the lighting to be altered before anything was done. Elegance and glamour…I think not!
The advertised five course meal started with our first course being a bread roll and a pot of something unknown and unexplained to spread on our roll. Is this honestly a first course?
The water on the table and the wine we purchased was put on the table…no tasting the wine to see if it was acceptable. None of the drinks were poured for us…not once!
Surely if you know a group are unhappy with some of your experience you try to improve things by making sure their service is exceptional. Sadly that was not the case. Your staff stood at the welcome drinks table watching as one of our family members got up and moved around the table serving the drinks.
The calling of the meal was clearly disorganised. Having guests at that table used to working in luxury events, to sit down and see the placement cards with the relevant guests’ food labelled on them, felt lazy. Even with the food detailed per person at that table on their placement card, the staff were obviously not being given a proper calling brief per table. Those with dietaries were made to wait, and / or plates of food were then taken back to the kitchen to ‘check’ the allergens, wrong plates were placed and a team didn’t place the food on the table at the same time. These are all aspects of basic dining that you would expect - let alone fine dining at a five star restaurant and establishment!!
The food was good but honestly the whole experience was not ‘something special’ as you had advertised. It must be noted that we had a guest eating the risotto, a fork had been laid instead of a spoon. Again, a grave mistake when selling a premium product!
We weren’t the only disappointed family on Christmas Day. Two other groups who came after us refused to stay and requested to be moved. When it came to the final course of coffee and mince pies we refused to stay in that soulless and, now empty, conference room any longer and said we wanted to be in the lounge. We waited fifteen minutes to be given that space and even then after a long time in the lounge we had to ask for our coffees to be served.
n all the final cost was £2,000. WE would be happy to pay that if we had received what we had booked - a five course meal in The Manor House. What we were given was not what we had booked…a soulless conference room with no ambiance, elegance or ‘dash of elegance or glamour’. The service was poor, it was not five courses and quite frankly it was below par with a pub Christmas lunch.
25 décembre 2024
Avis spontané
