How to handle situation when a site fails to retrieve only part of a webpage?

Say that there's a search filter where the page pulls a set of metadata from the server in order to display the individual items within each filter category.

However, in some situations where a server fails to pull back the data for whatever reason, we're currently just not showing anything in the list.

This is a poor UX obviously, but I'm not sure what a better alternative is. This is a very rare occurrance, but still a genuine possibility.

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The options we've considered are:

  1. Force a page reload to try and pull the data again (but if the issue is because of a failed server the page will reload infinitely, which is also very poor experience
  2. Serve up a browser 500 error as the page has just failed - which also isn't great, because it would still be possible to use the page, just that one specific filter isn't available this particular time
  3. Remove that filter category altogether when this issue occurs (again, not ideal, because the user will be expecting to see it).
  4. Show an error in the place of the countries list - but then what would we say there? 'Sorry the server broke a bit but try again, although that might not work anyway'?

What should we serve to the user in cases of a partial page load fail that leaves only a small part of the page unusable?

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