Christmas lunch 2025 - R850 rip-off

As a family we made a reservation for Christmas lunch 2025 at Toadbury Restaurant. An overbooked, under-catered, under-delivered, under-sourced experience. Inside the restaurant people were greeted by candles, chandeliers and lights with an overflow under a canopy with no lights, garden chairs and tables, no chandeliers and candles. Everybody paid the same inside and outside. The qeues were forever which speaks of bad planning - hundreds of people having to quere at one serving station with long waiting times. The layout of the food was unimaginative as if just another meal of low quality (for a Christmas lunch). The food was as in totally below average standard: Quinoa salad was lumps of quinoa with some vegies in it. Beetroot and pumpkin salad presented with pumpkin still skin on as well as pumpkin pips (not the eating kind). They ran out of main course food towards the later group of people and the same also happened with the desert. The deserts was totally under par with people having to wait and constantly ask the personnel what is happening. Dissatisfaction was clearly experienced amongst a lot of customers. The service was equally bad. When you look for someone to ask about the food they shone in their absence. When you managed to get someone to ask, they couldn't answer, could not even tell what the dishes were and disappeared without getting anything resolved. This was a complete below par experience with below par food and below par service. Whilst this was our first Christmas lunch at Toadbury, it most definitely will also be my last. What a pity that a so-called 5 star venue dished up such **** to customers paying a premium for a Christmas lunch.