yhangry — Local services in London

There are much better alternatives to this service, which was totally substandard.

The amount of food was ridiculous for £100+ per head. The takeaway afterwards was a saviour! It was best described as a 5 course tapas meal. In defence of the Chef, it was exactly as noted on the menu - we were clearly foolish to assume there'd be sides or more to it. For example, the dessert mousse was around a table spoon of mousse (literally), dotted over the plate, the steak we chose was probably around 8cm2, and that was the complete dish (wasn't anything special, just a steak, fairly well cooked like I would at home).

Two guests became very poorly afterwards. We suspect the Sole.

There was indeed a “wipe down” of surfaces by Ellen (the Chef) but my property was NOT left as it was found. Grease all over surfaces / KITCHEN CABINETS / chopping boards, the hob was still dirty, sinks were not cleaned and pans were RAMMED into the dishwasher (we had to clean by hand - they would never have cleaned on a cycle) and the floor was just as bad as the surfaces (I have no idea how it became so greased from cooking 5 small tapas plates of food). There was even food splatters on window sills and windows.

I have no idea where Ellen parked, I have an 80 meter driveway and her car was nowhere to be seen. This just shows how little food was brought with her, she carried it in 2 small bags. That’s all that she brought with her. She arrived 1 hour before service to prep the entire meal.

Not to mention that the “experience” of having a Chef was near none existent. No explanation or presentation of the tapas plates and near no engagement. I had more conversation with the chap who delivered the takeaway afterwards. Ellen was polite but, not the experience I was promised.

yHangry did offer to refund 4% of the order and the Chef offered 10%. But, this still represented a massive overcharge on what was delivered and was unfair in my opinion. I'd rather leave an honest review than accept such a small unjust reduction. I expected, of course, to pay more than a restaurant but it was truly shocking and a lot of work thereafter to clean up. Ellen denied the issues (yHangry claim "... excellent track record of 18 jobs with 11 positive review") but it was indefensible on this occasion. We have photos of everything so, if she counters this review with a reply, I'll set up a website to share them and update on here.

Another prudent point is to ignore their website and read their terms. The website makes a big deal of the "guarantee":

"At Yhangry, all payments are securely held in escrow until after your event. This ensures your funds are protected, minimizing any risks. Whether your concern is a no-show chef or a bad experience, pay securely through the platform for peace of mind.".

yHangry were quick to point out their terms:

"...WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE TO YOU FOR THE PROFESSIONAL SERVICES WHICH THE INDEPENDENT PROFESSIONALS PROVIDE AND WE ARE UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE YOU WITH A REFUND OR CREDIT NOTE IN THE EVENT YOU ARE DISSATISFIED WITH THE PROFESSIONAL SERVICES WHICH YOU HAVE RECEIVED FROM THE INDEPENDENT PROFESSIONALS".

This is misleading and I'm about to submit a report to ASA. I'll update the outcome on the review.

Avoid,...

TLDR: Read all yhangry's T&Cs and full policies in FULL before booking anything!!! Do not trust what is on the homepage and emails, as they don't mention when there are exclusions. They have charged me 100% for an event even after saying that they would cancel and refund it. I have tried to get in touch and am waiting for a response…

This company is not up front and transparent about exclusions to policies. If you’re planning a Christmas or NYE gathering, beware that there is zero refund policy once you’ve confirmed and paid any deposit - despite the homepage and multiple emails I received all stating a “100% refund until 7 days before your event”. Don't get me wrong, I understand why they would exclude those dates; however, the issue is that nowhere is this mentioned within the process of setting up or paying for your event, or in any of their confirmation emails. Nor is there even an asterisk next to their "full refund" message to alert to people before booking. That feels very purposefully misleading and hidden.

I had pre-booked a NYE event while still confirming final guest numbers - as you can change the guest numbers for the event. I didn't have as many people available as I had hoped, so was going to cancel my 'canape' style event and rebook for a seated dinner which would involve cancelling the first event and creating a new one. The ONLY reason that I found out that I could not cancel is because I reached out to them to confirm about the remaining payment on the original event. When I complained, Yhangry said that the only way they would cancel it was if I spoke to the chef and he agreed to accept the cancellation, which thankfully he did. I would have lost my money for the cost of the entire event if I hadn't decided to make contact. £600 crisis averted, but it should never have gotten to a point where that was reliant on the empathy of a third-party chef. They have a responsibility to make sure people are aware of this exemption so they can make an informed decision. Sadly, I think it's incompetency that yhangry have not signposted vital information like this in the right places in their booking journey. Someone could EASILY lose 000s on booking a lavish or large dinner party which would completely ruin their Xmas or NYE.

It’s such a shame; yhangry is a great concept, but unfortunately I have lost a lot of trust in their competency and honesty. The platform is not well designed/clear, and be prepared to receive a million email messages (they spam your inbox with notifications, reminders, and marketing). The FAQs link in their footer sends you to a Japanese clothing site... You would never see this from a professional service. If I ever book again, I will be reading every line in their legal T&Cs and policies just in CASE there's something that might affect me. Unfortunately, after this experience, that's what I feel you need to do...

My experience with Chef Thomas Middleton has been absolutely terrible. We initially booked him through Yhangry for a wedding, and we also reached out to him directly since we had worked with him before.

At first, Thomas confirmed his availability for the wedding date, and we all assumed he would be taking the booking. We even turned down other chefs and caterers because he committed himself to the booking over conversations we had with him and the Yhangry manger involved.

However, Thomas failed to deliver on his promises. He was supposed to send us a menu by a specific date, but he encountered various issues, such as a broken laptop and personal matters, which prevented him from fulfilling his obligations. Again we felt like these were just excuses from him because he just seemed very disorganised every time we would call him rushing from one booking to the other.

To accommodate his requests, we traveled over two hours to the venue to take pictures of the kitchen, as Thomas specifically asked us to do so in order to plan the logistics of the service and get a better feel for the kitchen.

After a week of discussions, Thomas suddenly informed us that he had other commitments and could no longer proceed with our booking, despite previously confirming his availability and engaging in extensive conversations about the event. He stated that there was nothing he could do about it and he couldn’t honour our booking after telling us on several occasions that he’ll be taking our booking on.

Neither Thomas nor anyone from Yhangry took any responsibility to contact us over a telephone call to discuss the situation, or offer an apology and discuss the next steps with us and how we will prevent ourselves from being in this situation again. In fact, when we tried to reach out to a Yhangry manager, their response was very inadequate and just lacking empathy.

As long-standing customers of Yhangry, we are utterly disgusted by the service we have received this time. While we have encountered several issues with chefs and their processes in the past, but we have let them go out of goodwill.

We will never engage the services of Chef Thomas Middleton again. His unprofessionalism and attitude in this situation have put us in an extremely difficult position. With the wedding only two weeks away, we are left without a chef. The bride is really stressed and it’s caused her a great deal of anxiety, as she was under the impression that Thomas was going to be catering at her wedding.

The response from the Yhangry team to this situation has been highly disappointing, with no one addressing the root cause or offering an apology for the inconvenience caused. Thomas's failure to properly manage his schedule is extremely unprofessional and has caused tremendous stress for everyone involved.

I wouldn’t even give this review a 1 star, that’s how appalling this whole...