Thyme Restaurant in Havant

Part of a meal deal at the attached Premier Inn we had a varied experience. The dinner was good, plenty of choice, well prepared and decent portions. Breakfast sadly was not up to the usual standard. Buffet cooked items were drying out and looked quite unattractive. No orange juice.

I’ve already reviewed the hotel part of this Premier Inn and have given it 4*s however, sadly the Thyme restaurant was a different experience.

 The Asst. Manager had told us in advance that he would be cooking that night as they didn’t have a chef and by his own admission he wasn’t a chef. Not easy.
 We had a “Meal Deal” and ordered Prawn Cocktail to start with and then Fish & Chips.

 The Prawn Cocktail was really good and had lots of prawns in it.
 The Fish & Chips however were a different matter.
 They arrived and they looked like they were breadcrumbed as they were very thin (they looked more like Escalope to be honest) and had been oven baked. Mine was also burnt at the edges and was very dry as it had been well over cooked and my wife’s was also dry but not quite as burnt as mine. She ate some of hers but left a good part of it. 
I mentioned it to the waiter and he took the plate back to the chef.

 He came back and told me I could order something else so I then ordered the King Prawn Linguine.
 I also went to the chef(Asst Manager and told him that I knew he was in stress cooking after a shift on the desk but all he could repeat was that the fish hadn’t been burnt. This was the same person who’d warmly welcomed us at Reception but was now not willing to discuss the matter and refuted my claim. He did however cook me the Linguine and it was very good.
 In later discussions with the waitress when we asked, once again to speak to the chef he didn’t appear but sent the waitress to us saying that they’d refund us our meal deals but that we could still have breakfast the following morning. 

As I’ve said, the Linguine I finally got served was very good but the whole experience left a bad taste in the mouth (no pun intended) and spoiled the relaxed evening that we’d been looking forward to. The 4*s for service is based on the waiter/waitress.