Il Nobile — Restaurant in Ixelles - Elsene

RACIST AND RUDE!!

We arrived at the restaurant 10 minutes before they stopped taking orders. We kindly asked if we could be seated and the waiter (blonde young guy) rolled his eyes and only said "you have 5 minutes, 5!! We need to go to sleep". We thanked him, chose our food in 2 minutes and he took our order all the while rolling his eyes and treating us as if he was doing us a favour. We didn't think much of it and blamed it on the fact that he was at the end of his shift and was probably tired. One more couple came after us, ordered and got served without being yelled at for coming 2 min before closing! The waiter continued to be rude and abrupt throughout our interaction. We finished our food (which was actually good) and asked for the bill and he came up with an overall bill of the table. It was 4 of us so we asked to pay separately by card to which the waiter answered that we couldn't and we had to pay everything together. We looked at him in shock as it is common practice to pay separately, but he kept saying no and that he wasn't joking and made my friend pay for everything leaving us with the problem of sorting it out. We accepted that it was their policy and we were ready to be on our way when he went to the next table to get the bill to 3 Belgian people. We were speaking in English but I also speak French and I heard them saying that they wanted to split the bill three ways, to which the waiter said of course and took the payments SEPARATELY! I was staring at him in disbelief and be came to ask me if something was wrong and I let him know that we were not stupid and his behaviour was discriminatory! He thought that we were actually tourists so he wasn't bothered about us not coming again and he treated us differently than the locals. He tried to make up a lie about different bills but he gave up quickly as it made no sense and offered us limoncello as a cure for having suffered racist behaviour. I refused and left and I'll make sure I'll never go back to this immensely inappropriate place of business. Avoid if you are not Belgian and don't want to be...

RACIST MANAGER??? We are a friendly interracial couple. We went to "Il Nobile" on a Saturday night and as we entered the manager asked if we made a reservation and we said that we hadn't, then he replied that we would have to wait about 45min, so we decide to "take away" our pizzas and sit at the bar while their prepared our pizzas.

As we are waiting at the bar a white couple enters and the manager asked whether they made a reservation, to what they responded "no", then the manager invites them to sit in a small table in a corner next to the entrance. Two minutes after, a family of 4 members enters (all white), and the manager asks whether they had booked in advance and they also said "No, we did not make a reservation". The manager starts to doubt and to our astonishment he says "Huum OK come in, I think I may have space". And just before he followed them to the table a black man entered and without even letting him speak, the manager told him "Sorry we are fully booked".

Everything happened just right in front of us and we thought it was unacceptable, so I kindly told this to one of the young waiters and I mentioned that these people did not book in advance. The young boy was very kind and said that he would check whether there were tables available and few seconds later he invites us to sit at a table! And where we sat down, we saw there was another free table! So, although the food is amazing, wine is very good, ambience is also good my culinary experience was impacted by this, I believe, racial incident. Two young waiters that night were nice, polite, respectful, kind and fast! I even got offered a glass of wine. It is a great place and I recommend it because of the amazing food and...

I had very high expectations about the restaurant and I must admit I was a bit let down. It gave me the impression that nobody actually knew what was going on. We had to wait a lifetime just for the starter, with waiters coming and going asking us again what our order was. Eventually the food wasn't bad, but it was clearly adapted to Northern European tastes, because it was quite far from Italian. For instance my pizza was good, but the amount of garlic was insane. No Italian pizza would have the same amount of garlic, it was impossible to digest it! The stars are all for the service of one waiter, a Sicilian guy called Christopher. He went above and beyond to cover from the fact that our meal was late, brought us bread and came back to be sure that everything was alright. He was the only real professional I've seen in the place, the kind of guy who does PR for the...