Top 10 restaurants for a smooth Valentine’s Day dinner

13/02/15 Taking your beloved out for a romantic meal on Valentine’s can be stressful. Chock-a-block dining rooms, ‘special’ menus and the chance of a long wait can all conspire to dash our hopes of glamorous romance

That’s where we’re here to help. We’ve taken the anonymous data from complaints raised via resolver against the UK’s biggest restaurant chains, and worked out the ones that are least likely to give you poor service – even on Valentine’s Day.

(Yes, we know that flashier independent restaurants might be more suave locations for a Valentine’s date, but not everyone can afford Michelin-star prices, or have the presence of mind to book six months in advance…)

Top 10 restaurant chains

These are the best restaurants for customer service, receiving the fewest customer complaints via resolver per outlet.

1. Greene King public house
2. Pizza Express
3. Wagamama
4. Table Table
5. Café Rouge
6. Yo Sushi
7. Ember Inns
8. Nando’s
9. Chiquito’s
10. Vintage Inns

Of course, there are always local restaurants that you can choose (and resolver doesn’t cover these just yet), but our list covers half of all the restaurants on our high streets.

And even if you do pick one of our least complained-about restaurants and something goes wrong, then you can always get your issue heard by using resolver …

Bottom of the pops – our users’ 10 least favourite big-name eateries for customer service

These are the worst big-name restaurants for customer service, receiving the fewest customer complaints via resolver per outlet (running from worst to least-worst).

1. Toby Carvery
2. Hungry Horse
3. Harvester
4. TGI Friday’s
5. Bella Italia
6. Brewer’s Fayre
7. Zizzi’s
8. Pizza Hut
9. Beefeater
10. Sizzling Pubs

If you are going to order a takeaway… 

Sometimes you don’t want to cook, or even have to go out to eat, so if you’re planning a cosy night in (or you’re boycotting Valentine’s altogether; it’s been known), consider ordering from either Dominos Pizza or using the JustEat online takeaway service. Based on complaints from customers per outlet complaining they are delivering the best customer service. 

Loving our restaurant league

So if you are thinking of going out this Valentine’s Day, make sure you are feeling the love. And for less amorous times of the year, keep an eye on resolver.co.uk/news, as we’ll be publishing and regularly updating our list of the best restaurants for customer service; we want your meal to be memorable for the right reasons!

How our data works

Because there are hundreds of thousands of restaurants out there – and not all of them in the resolver system just yet – we’ve chosen to limit our data to restaurant chains with 50 or more outlets. We’ve also only picked restaurants about which our users have actually raised complaints.

It’s also important to remember that we’re not judging these restaurants on the quality of their food – this is just based on how likely (or not) you are to be a satisfied customer when you choose to go there.