The Harvester

So from what I can tell this chained restaurant is similar to IHOP and Coco’s in the US.
I was unfamiliar with the English breakfast sausage & bacon so I went overboard ordering 3 of each along with scrambled eggs, hash browns & tots… Way too much food for this old boy. The sausage & bacon here are what we’d call Italian sausage & Canadian bacon. I like the food & the restaurant. The server was unremarkable but efficient.

Truly one of the worst meals I’ve had. The salad bar was extremely poor, I circled it three times trying to find something to put in the bowl. Everything seemed to be swimming in water, the potato salad looked like it was covered in a weak, runny, unapetitising sauce, the only thing remotely inviting was the pasta. When I finally put a few things in the bowl and returned to my table, two fork fulls was enough to put me off eating any of the rest, so I left it.
For the main I ordered a Combo. It was billed as spit roast chicken and boneless ribs, read a drumstick, (yes honestly) and ribs that were so fatty, they were inedible. Combine that with a tiny bit of corn on the cob that looked like it had been under a hot plate for an hour, horrible chips and a truly inedible bbq sauce and you have a meal that was pretty awful.
I commented to my partner that it seemed like I’d ordered off of one of those tragic kids menus, (all chips and burgers). My partners meal of Fish and chips was equally poor. The fish was tasty if you pealed off the soggy batter but everything else was below par. We left 80−90% of our food and asked for the billl, the waitress said, did you enjoy your meal? !! Like the English we are, we just said nothing, paid and left. We then went to another nearby restaurant and ordered another main !
Why not complain? Well if the food was good quality and overcooked /​undercooked or something of that nature, I think it would be fair to complain. With this food I think it is what it is: The worst of British food ! It’s often said that our food has come a long way in recent years, it probably has at the higher end of the market, at this end it’s as bad as it ever was.

A brand new restaurant in North Swindon. It’s clean, friendly, modern and just how you expect a Harvester to be. The salad is always kept topped up and fresh. Staff are great. I’ve been here a few times now. Love it. Never had any issues.