Jacks Place in Poole

Good cuisine with excellent staff and welcoming atmosphere.

Cat 🐈 was a fabulous waitress very entertaining and efficient

We used to stay at The Haven many moons ago and wanted to return to see it. It was also a lovely day and hoped we could sit outside and watch the world go by in and out of Poole Harbour. Things started well but gradually became more worrying as our food did not arrive. We ended up waiting around 1.5 hours for our food with no explanation from the kitchen, despite waiting staff apologetically telling us food was ok minutes away. When the food did arrive, my sandwich looked like it had been toasted, it had sat on the pass for that long. They made me another sandwich and took it off the bill. The whole order should have been reimbursed but the bar manager didn't seem to think a 1.5 hour wait for food was problematic. Lovely setting, food good but staff judgement when things went wrong fell well short in my opinion.

Came for lunch with my girlfriend and her grandma, we called up the day before and tried to book a table for 2pm but were told we wouldn't be able to get a table booking until 3pm as they were booked up. (when we arrived there were only 3 other tables taken up in the large restaurant so we were unsure why they hadn't let us book any earlier as there was definitely space). We arrived at 3:10pm (10 mins late) due to grandma's mobility issues, we were apologetic for being late when we arrived and shown to our table, where the set menu was already on the table for us. As we sat down the waiter came straight over and told us we had to order immediately as the kitchen was closed and they would have to reopen for us but we had to be quick! Very surprising since there was no indication when we booked the day before that the kitchen would be shutting within minutes of our booking. The manager came up to our waiter and told him to 'get our orders in now and not mess around' whilst he was speaking to us and it all felt very hostile once we had entered - my poor girlfriends grandma didn't have time to even sit down and read the full menu before the waiter was rushing her, telling her he needed to take her order. We said the starters and mains we wanted and then I asked my girlfriend if she would like to get desserts or not, at which point the waiter told us desserts were not available! He then walked off without giving us a drinks menu or taking a drinks order from us. When the starters came I asked to see a drinks menu and get some water for the table but he never returned - we had to go to the bar to get drinks ourselves. Fortunately at the main course we had a new waitress who was lovely and she brought water over to our table. During the main course we heard the table behind us talking to the manager and they all ordered desserts, even though we had been told they were not available to us! When we had finished our mains the nice waitress came to take our plates and asked if we would like a desserts menu, we told her we had been informed desserts were not available and she was a little surprised by this and apologised. We paid the bill and left. Had it not been for the saving grace of the nice waitress we would have refused the service charge as the service we received prior to her arriving was abysmal. Very, very annoyed in particular by my poor girlfriends grandma being rushed by the waiter to order food before she had even sat down or had the chance to ask for a glass of water, not really acceptable to do to anyone but especially not a 90 year old. The bill was expensive for just a lunch but the food was good and the view is spectacular, the service just really let the restaurant down. Would not go back.