Restaurant had half the menu missing

[hattie43]

We went out to a local pub , part of a chain , for a meal New Year’s Eve. The waitress came over and explained they’d not had deliveries over the festive period so there was no red meat . That meant two thirds of the menu was not available. Nothing else hugely appealed but we chose something , my friend resorting to a Brie and cranberry panini with chips and salad . The waitress came back from the kitchen to say the Brie had gone . We then limped through the meal to be offered deserts . The sticky toffee pudding was now Xmas pudding and the lemon tart was now mandarin tart . I am right in thinking the restaurant should have called and explained giving us the option to cancel or reschedule

What did they mean ‘over the festive period’?
Since December 24?

They should have contacted you if that was the case ( though their suppliers may have been promising tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow day after day and never delivered ).

It's annoying but I think it does sometimes happen at this time of year, has definitely happened to us before. I probably would have just left if there was nothing that appealed on the menu.

Was it Spoons?

No . It was a nice chain that we would have expected better of .

They should have been better organised, our local pub had deliveries between Christmas and New Year and I am presuming the rest did too

I don’t think they should have contacted you, unless it was a large group booking (6 or more maybe). If they knew no deliveries were happening in advance, I’d have expected a warning at the time of booking. Without advance warning, or a phone call, I’d have expected to be able to walk away on the night without losing any pre-paid deposit - I’m a really fussy eater and there’s rarely more than 1 thing on a menu that I will eat. I always check menus ahead of going out to make sure there will be something for me, so if I got there and found there was nothing available that I’d like, I would want to go elsewhere.

I would leave a review warning others to be cautious booking there at Xmas time for this reason.

You had the option of leaving when the waitress explained the extremely limited menu. I realise on NYE it's unlikely you could have found a table anywhere else, but you could have gone home and ordered a takeaway. In an ideal world they would have called you, but they were probably hoping for the deliveries to turn up on the day, and then too busy to call everyone on NYE when they didn't. It's just one of those things.

When you say chain, is it somewhere where everything arrives in prepped or would their deliveries just be the ingredients from the wholesaler with all the cooking done from scratch on site?
A bigger chain with the kitchen simply warming stuff up and putting the plates together couldn't be expected to do much about it. They could have called, but I agree with PPs that they were probably expecting the delivery would arrive in time.
From a smaller chain who are cooking from scratch, I would expect someone to have been sent to a nearby supermarket to pick up missing ingredients that would get most/all of the menu back up. It would mean smaller profit margins/breaking even on those dishes for a few days but is better than customers walking out (when profit will still be made on drinks and other dishes) or leaving bad reviews.

Had you paid already? I think if I hadn’t paid upfront I would have left if nothing appealed to me. If it was more the atmosphere you wanted then I think I’d just suck it up.

We’d planned to eat out at our favourite Indian restaurant, but then decided to get takeaway from there instead. When we went online to order we had a similar thing - more than half of the menu was blanked out including what I’d wanted. I do wonder if it was the same story in the restaurant so I’m glad we didn’t book to go. We ordered from elsewhere.

Well no, it's a chain pub. Their thinking will be that at least you'll be able to get a few drinks.

If it was an independent high end restaurant than I think I'd appreciate a heads up that the meat was off.

But then again if they've been let down by a supplier or are too broke to pay them then they'll be probably desperate to keep as many customers as possible. And managers would be told staff just try and upsell the rest of the menu.

That assumes there is a chef in the kitchen who knows what they are doing. Given it’s a chain they will have stuff pre-made that they add to or warm up. If it’s say steak and ale pie on the menu the chef can’t just whip that up from scratch as the chances are they never make it in the first place.

What chain was it?

At least they told you. Spoons served me nachos with no guacamole and doubled up their salsa, which is awful and tasted as though it had been bulked up with ketchup.

I had thought ‘at least with Spoons you know what you’re getting’.

Oh I just wondered because the one I work at ran out of a lot of food on NY and we do a brie and cranberry panini and sticky toffee pudding.
I was wondering if you were one of my customers 😆

It's a shame your meal was disappointing.

Was it a set course NYE menu? The fact you mention substitutions makes me think it is. If so, they definitely should have let you know as you’d have booked based on that particular menu.