Carmarthenshire
The Drovers Arms, Ffarmers

The Drovers Arms, Ffarmers

Drovers Arms, SA19 8, Carmarthenshire, United Kingdom

Pubs • Lunch • British • Italian


"We visited on a Saturday evening. We had booked well in advance as there were eight of us. We arrived on time at 7pm and were shown to our table without issue. However, my husband was directed to the bar to get the drinks rather than table service. We were in the dining room and no one else was in there. The lady was pleasant and brought the specials board and menus to the tables pretty quickly. The younger man came and took our order fairly quickly too. So far so good. Then the fire alarm went off. No real issue, the female chef and the younger man came through the dining room and turned it off. Whilst walking back to the kitchen, the chef muttered something about it being due to the heat sensor above the grill. After a further half an hour and another fire alarm the starters arrived. They were okay. Nothing exciting or amazing, just okay and certainly not worth a half hour wait. We then waited for a further hour and a half for the mains to arrive. During this time the fire alarm went off again. We were never visited by any staff to update us on why the food was taking so long and felt we’d been left in the dining room. Two people didn’t have starters and were absolutely starving by 9:15 when the food started to arrive. We were all pretty fed up by this point too. We had to order further drinks from the bar as no one came to serve us or even check we were okay in all that time. When the food arrived bits were missing from three of the eight meals. My son ordered the pasta and by the time his garlic bread arrived he’d finished his dinner. He is ten and asked for an adults meal and it was very small. He was still hungry when he’d finished. My daughters meal didn’t arrive until we were all nearly finished. I asked for my steak to be medium and it was so overcooked it was dry and grey. I would have told the staff if they had come back to ask how the meal was but they didn’t. I couldn’t see the point in going looking for the staff to get a new steak cooked as it had taken two hours from ordering to bring that one. I had to leave half my steak as it was inedible, which I’ve never done before. Everyone else said their food was okay but nothing special and nowhere near what you’d expect after a 2 hour wait. About 20 minutes after we had finished the female chef appeared. I told her of the unacceptable wait time and my awful steak and the other issues. She said this was not normal and blamed the fire alarm as she’d had to reset the grill each time adding to the delay. She said she’s explained this and the extended food wait time to us when she came through to turn off the alarm each time which is completely untrue. No one explained anything to us about the long wait or even acknowledged it until I raised it. The chef didn’t seem too bothered about my awful steak and told me how busy she was and what an awful day she’d had. She didn’t take any responsibility for the issues and just made excuses which I then felt was becoming an argument with her which I didn’t want to have. The customer service was poor so I gave up raising the issues any further and just asked for the issues I’d raised to be reflected in the bill. They took a bottle of wine off the bill which in all fairness we only had due to the long wait. It still took half an hour to bring the bill and for us to pay. Some of us still had room for a pudding but were so fed up we decided just to pay and have pudding at our holiday cottage. We are staying nearby for a further week but will not be going back here. We have been in Wales for 10 days now and eaten out most days. We’ve had some amazing meals in some fantastic places with the friendliest staff. This was by far the worst service I have had in a very very long time. Seven out of the eight meals were just okay but my steak was awful."

Indian Lounge

Indian Lounge

34-36 High Street, Carmarthenshire, United Kingdom

Meat • Curry • Indian • Buffet


"A group of 6 of us stayed in LLandovery for a weekend August bank holiday and booked a table at the Indian Lounge, well as soon as we sat down we should have known not to have stayed, our table and cutlery was so sticky...we could only think it was from mango chutney from the night before, it went all over the sleeve of my top as i was not expecting a dirty table to sit down at. We asked if they could clean the table but were moved to another table where i found a AA battery on the seat, we made a light joke about it and also found the Cutlery on the other table felt oily but again we laughed it off and said we cannot complain yet again. so yet to order.... The drinks order came out wrong but we could live with that...... Starters.... i must have to say the starters were nice, but then it went downhill yet again. When the mains came out they missed 1 whole meal completely, i was told mine was a jalfrezi when infact it was a dish my husband had ordered i had already dished some of it up when Chef (the waiter) grabbed it and said NO and moved it to the end of the table, we told him we were one dish short, so i then had to wait for mine when all other 5 meals had been placed on our table for approx 5 min, but the worst was yet to come, when the naan breads were brought out to be served The Waiter Chef' as we later found out was his name, lifted up our naan bread peeling it apart with he's fingers to see if it was keema naan or a plain naan, then dumped it back on our table and walked over to another table and served 2 ladys on a table opposite. i overheard one of the lady's inform him the toilet was leaking and he replied yes yes we know. this was only 6.30 7pm so not even after a busy evening but just the start of the evening and they knew the toilets were broken. The whole evening the poor waitress looked very uncomfortable and when we asked for the bill, we asked for a reduction due to wrong orders and the service we recieved, she told us to wait for Chef and he will speak to us, he made us wait for over 10 mins until we decided to get up and walk to the bar, he soon came running over and said he would knock off 1 drink, we replied thats not quite enough for the service we had recieved, we infomred him we were willing to pay £95 instead of £112. Chef then started shouting quite loudly You are Rude' Very Rude People' so all could hear in the restaurant. That was no way , management should react and speak with customers but then he did seem to have bad customer skills from the start, we still felt we paid more than enough for what it was worth, sadly with a mixture of dirty tables not just 1, wrong drinks order, waiter otherwise called Chef by staff opening up a naan bread infront of us to see which one it was with he's fingers, then having to wait for a missed meal the service did not warrant paying full price, I have never not paid for a meal and been in such a awful place and will never return to this place. We also mentioned on way home there was no details taken from anyone of us for track and trace either in this current situation with Covid 19."