Susanne Faussner
25-Apr-2012
I previously went for lunch to the Grand, great service, stunning venue, good food! Last night I took 2 German travel writers to the Grand for dinner. I was really reluctant after reading all the reviews, but we had a stunning evening. Service was a bit slow at the beginning, but improved and was fine. We ordered salads as starters to share, the salads could have been a bit more elaborate. We all ordered the line fish of the day (kingklip) with veggies. The grilled kingklip was of outstanding quality and the veggies tasty. We paid cash and the waiter came back to the table to ask whether we were not happy with his service. We assured him that we were happy with his service. The waiter then explained to us, that guests to South Africa tip at least 10% when they are happy with the service. We agreed with him and asked him to count the cash received again, which ended with an embarressement for him, as a more than 10% tip was included in the cash. When leaving we had a longer discussion about the attitude of entitlement in South Africa concerning tips. From leaving the plane to finally arriving at the hotel room my friend had paid tips 11 times!
Melonie Kariem
29-Feb-2012
Firstly upon arrival we could not secure a disabled parking close to the restaurant, only upon insisting that there should be provision made for disabled patrons were we given parking close to the entrance of the restaurant. My partner is on crutches, the table which we were shown to was situated slap bang in the middle of what could at best be described as the “walk-way”. We constantly had to move his crutches so as to not have someone trip over them.
We had been seated for a good 12 minutes before anyone appeared at our table. The person arrived enquired what we wanted to drink, before we could finish our orders the food arrived for the table adjacent to ours, without as much as an “excuse me please” our waiter moved from our table and proceeded to deliver the food at the next table. This should have immediately set off the warning bells for me, but I was determined to have dinner at the renowned Grand. The next indicator should have been when the patron at the table where the food have just been delivered called the waiter to complain that her food was cold. We placed the order for our starters and my partner stepped away from the table. The waiter returned at this stage with 1 bread roll, yes 1, and proceeded to share the following with me “I could have come back here with nothing, but here’s 1 roll so long I’ll see if I can scale another one for you!” Scale? Seriously, you have to poach a bread roll for me.
The disappointment did not stop there. The Grand proceeded to diminish themselves even further. We placed the order for our mains and both our starches when they arrived at the table were ice cold. We managed to flag down a passing waiter as ours was nowhere to be found. At no stage did our waiter come to enquire whether he could remove our food to be kept warm whilst we waited for our starch. Eventually when our starch reappeared at our table (by this time our meals had been consumed already), we were gobsmacked. These were McCain fries which had been fried too long in very questionable oil!
Worst service ever!
Comments
Vicki Tully
1-Mar-2012
From most of the reviews it appears that the Grand is useless when it comes to food and service! I must admit that if you go there with the intention of having just drinks on their 'beach' from their cash only bar it can be a very pleasant experience and the service is within your control. On saying that they really should start considering their customers.
Lisa Nel
26-Feb-2012
Worst place I have ever been to in my life! We almost left in tears after a great day was totally ruined. We just wanted to end our day with a quick ice cream and drinks before we had to rush home. Our waitor made us feel utterly unwelcome. He gave us unwashed cutlery, that still had food on. He never checked up on us. Then he moved our umbrella to an empty table so that we had to sit in the sun. He did it out of spite although we never said anything mean to him, we never called the manager, we never treated him with disrespect. When he brought our food he spilled half our sauce onto our plates and that just took the napkin off and thought that was okay. We had nothing to eat with and no sauce. When asked for the bill he threw it down and walked away. We never did anything to him. Was the worst end of a day ever. We emailed them and we just wanted some sort of a small apology but they never even replied. Worst place I have ever been to in my life. I hope anyone who reads this will never go there. How can anyone support people like these?
Zed BM
27-Nov-2011
Wonderful location but we found it very, very noisy. They were having a Jack Daniels promotion, so that could have been why. Service was very slow, waited 30 minutes for our table to be set and for drinks. And we had a reservation. Food was ok. Would go back for the sea and the sand and cocktails.
