Thanks to everyone who has rated me this year. I will still be around to rate in December but just ...
Thanks to everyone who has rated me this year. I will still be around to rate in December but just fancy a month off writing. Would appreciate some rates on my older reviews also.
Member since:15.02.2007
Reviews:67
Members who trust:70
Its quite strange really, I have a harvester a mile away from where I live in Nuneaton and I havent been there for a good 5 years. In the past week however I've been there twice and I'm left wondering why I left it so long in between my previous visits.
-- Location and Surroundings --
The restaurant is situated on the corner of St Nicolas Park Drive and Hinckley road in a very affluent part of the town. The restaurant itself is quite well hidden from the main road by the sheer volume of fir trees. The restaurant shares its location with a Travel Lodge so any businessman in the area would be well advised to sleep in the Travel Lodge and eat in the Harvester. The car park is shared between the two establishments and I would guess there is enough parking for 40-50 cars. On the two recent occasions I have been (Thursday lunchtime and Saturday lunchtime) parking has been very easy though it could get a lot busier in the evenings.
-- Inside the restaurant --
The layout of the restaurant is very pleasing. The restaurant has been divided into two secions. The left hand side is a bar area where you can go and enjoy a drink
without the need to buy food (again, another pluss point for the businessman staying in the Travel Lodge). This is a two tiered arrangement with the upper tier being only a couple of steps higher than the lower tier. All popular beers, spirits, wines, soft drinks, etc are stocked.
The right hand section is for the restaurant itself. Directly in front of you is the highly rated salad bar which, if you are not careful, will fill you up, even before your main meal has arrived. As with the bar, there is a two tier seating arrangement and room for what I would guess would be 80 to 100 diners.
-- The menu --
Harvester operates what it calls an early bird menu. This means that if you eat before 6.30pm on Monday to Friday and before 5pm on a Saturday, they will knock a third off their advertised prices. This suddenly makes eating out in numbers a lot more affordable. There is also a childrens style menu called the Young Guests Menu. This is however different from the standard childrens menu where you normally get a poor version of a sausage, burger, etc with chips and beans. The Youung Guests menu allows children to eat exactly the same food as an adult but with a slightly reduced portion size.
All meals, whether adult or junior portions allow you to use the salad bar. You can use the salad bar as many times as you like though if you can manage more than two bowls you are doing well (or you are taking a doggy bag home for later). All the favourite salad items are available including cucumber, sweetcorn, peppers, onions, etc plus some fine items that complement this such as croutons, bacon bits and raisins. Add to this the choice of about 5 sauces (low fat mayonnaise, blue cheese, red devil, mustard and honey plus one more that I cant remember) and the freshest bread rolls you are ever going to taste and you already have a heafty meal before the main course has even arrived.
The Harvester actually sell starters but I really cant see the point of ordering these when the salad bar is included in the price of a main meal.
The menu for main courses is very extensive and gives a wide range of meat, fish and pasta dishes plus a wide selection for the vegetarian diner. As well as all the traditional English restaurant food (steaks, bolognese, scampi, etc) the Harvester provides some intuitive and original meals such as the chicken and bacon stack which I have now had twice in the past week. This comprises of thick suculent pieces of chicken combined with equally thick pieces of bacon piled on top of each other. This dish comes with barbecue sauce and peas and new potatoes as standard. The first time I had this dish, I had the potatoes but the seconds time I opted for chips as I found the potatoes were slightly too filling after all the salad.
Other meals we ordered were the Harvester Burger which consisted of a huge beef burger and bacon burger in a batch accompanied with salad and chips. Although this doesnt sound that big, it really was adequate and my wife failed to finish it all. For the children, we ordered two portions of the barbeque ribs from the young guests menu. I must admit I was worried when these meals came as I was convinced they had brought two adult sized portions, such was the size of the meal. Again, these came with peas and chips as standard.
The Harvester do offer a sweets menu but to be perfectly honest, unless you are a real light eater or have a particular sweet tooth, you are going to be too full to indulge.
--Drinks --
Drinks in the restaurant in my opinion are quite pricey. Four half pints of cola set me back £4.80 (£1.20 a drink). This may well be standard for a restaurant in central England but to me it was higher than it should have been.
-- Service --
The Harvester operate a full waiter/waitress service. When you enter the restaurant, a member of staff will be on hand to greet you and show you to your table. They will then take your drinks order and give you time to peruse the menu. They will bring all drinks to your table for you which avoids you having to enter the par area of the establishment. I found our waiter to be most pleasant and cheerful.
When the bill arrives, there is a section which encourages you to leave a tip for your waiter though this is totally optional.
-- Verdict --
For years, we have been drawn towards the 'budget' style options such as 2 for £10 or buy one get one free. Whilst the food has always been good at these places I have always left, still feeling quite hungry. This is certainly not the case with the Harvester. I challenge anyone to leave whilst still feeling like they could manage another mouthful. If you go for the early bird menu, it actually works out at a similar price as those establishments offering 2 for £10 menus. For 2 adult meals, 2 meals from the Young Guests menu and the 4 half pints of cola we paid £24 which I was pleased with considdering the quality of food on offer.
I would certainly recommend trying the Harvester if there is one in your area . To check for locations visit www.harvester.co.uk trust me, you wont be disappointed.
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Advantages: Honest, wholesome, value-for-money food. Child friendly. Disadvantages: Some restaurants have very low standards. Not especially couple-friendly.
tiddlekins 26.05.2008 (27.05.2008)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Harvester Restaurants
Aug 6th, 2007
exceptional by (11%):
very helpful by (89%):
