"I haven 't been to the mayflower for years. The last time was for my mums birthday meal 3 years ago, we had 2 young children and waited 1.5hours for our mains. My wife had been their recently for lunch and said the food was good! Especially the desert, and would love to go for her birthday. I booked a table for 11 over a week in advance for 6pm. We arrived and were told there is a 45-60minute wait for food, and because of the size of our table they cannot guarantee our food will come out at the exactly the same time. This was fair they has warned us but it was also gross understatement. They did have notices up saying they didn 't accept walk ins, which was fine, we had booked. We heard they only had 1 person in the kitchen, and from what we could see 2-3members of staff running front of house. NOT A MANAGER IN SIGHT. I also can 't stress that it was not full. It was a long way away from capacity. So of our 11, the first 4 main dishes came out after 1hour 5mins...reasonable. Another dish came out 10minutes later. My young children had starters with their kids meal, consisting of nachos. No dips as they didn 't want them, just a bowl of crisps. These took 1hour and 45minutes to come out. By this time, my children were becoming quite tearful. My inlaws dinner came out next. And at roughly 2hours in to our meal, everyone 's plates were cleared from the table. WE STILL HAD NOT HAD OUR FOOD, NOR THE CHILDRENS MAINS. My wife went to speak to the staff, and working in hospitality was incredibly understanding, we know this is a management issue and not a staff issue. It was not the waiting staffs fault. They were under the impression it was just the children who hadn 't had their meal, but we informed them we hadn 't either. After 2hours 20mins, our food arrived. The wifes bun-less burger, boasting grilled chicken breast, avocado, tomato salsa, lettuce topped with sour cream arrived. It was lettuce, two slices of tomato, and a COLD chicken breast that was bordering pink in the middle. No avocado, no salsa, no sour cream. My daughter, who by this point was tired, frustrated, really lost control when her chicken was cold, her corn on the cob fell apart, she didn 't like it and to be fair to her the corn looked rank. My son (5) managed to eat some of his chips whilst falling asleep in his chair. The staff were accommodating when I wouldn 't pay for most of the food. I asked for the cake we had bought down for a birthday celebration to be given back to me in the bag as we had no time for this. I felt extremely bad for the continued customers coming in from the adjoining Hotel placing orders for food, not knowing how long they 'd have had to wait and what would arrive when it got there. We left, and got some food from the mcdonalds across the road. So I wasn 't going to leave a review, but I thought I 'd phone them this morning, and ask if I could order the desert my wife wanted for a treat, maybe give the restaurant a chance to redeem itself. I wasn 't asking to have them for free, I wanted to pay. I was told quite sternly this isn 't something they would do through fear of repercussions if something were to go wrong. I think think allowing a takeaway desert is the least of their worries. Genuinly disorganised. Understaffed, clearly incredibly poorly managed. This town has lost plenty of good places over the last few years, and this in my book is another restaurant gone. If I worked their, I 'd be looking to get off that clearly sinking ship, I wouldn 't want my name anywhere near that car crash."
