1916 Cafe & Restaurant — Restaurant in Uttar Pradesh

During my recent trip to Varanasi, I had the opportunity to visit a cafe with my friends and colleagues. We arrived around 9:45 AM with a group of eight people. When we attempted to place our order, the server assigned to us became preoccupied with a table of foreign customers. While it is certainly welcoming to host foreigners, the way he handled the situation left much to be desired. The server engaged in a lengthy conversation with the foreigners, lasting about 30-40 minutes, and, to our dismay, the information he provided seemed inaccurate and hard to understand. From the expressions and reactions of the foreigners, it appeared that they were amused by his comments.

Eventually, another server, Raushan Dubey, approached our table. While he did take our order, his behavior was rude and unprofessional. He abruptly instructed us to place all our orders at once, warning that no further orders would be accepted after that. Meanwhile, the first server continued to ignore us, focusing on the foreigners. When they left, they barely tipped him, and yet he seemed to be more concerned with them than with serving our table. Despite our repeated requests for basic items like water and tissues, he paid little attention to our needs.

While it is admirable to value and appreciate foreign guests, it is equally important to treat fellow countrymen with respect and courtesy. This experience left us feeling overlooked and disrespected. It is essential that businesses maintain a balanced approach and ensure that all customers, regardless of nationality, receive the same level of attention...

I visited 1961 Café & Restaurant, Varanasi with my family and ordered vegetarian food. To our shock, we found a bone in the mix vegetable sabji. When we informed the waiter, instead of apologizing sincerely, he casually offered us a complimentary ‘dal’. By the time we found the bone, our food was already almost finished. At the time of bill payment, we requested a fair discount considering the seriousness of the issue, but the staff was rude and unprofessional. The manager, Radhey Shyam, not only refused our request but also spoke to us very rudely. Finally, they gave only a 38% discount while still charging service charges, which was unacceptable after wasting our 1 hour for the discussion. This was a serious hygiene lapse and showed complete disregard for customer belief, safety and respect. I would strongly advise others to think twice before dining here if they care about food quality and customer service. Not only this, they were about to serve food on a dirty plastic plate thinking we were the last customers but later we got the plates changed to bone china ones which it should have been in the first place and we had to repeat 4 times for spoons to which the stuff replied thy dishes are being washed. What is the point of services if customers have to repeat everything and the staff doesn’t even care...

Literally the worst part of my whole trip was this restaurant. The staff was beyond rude and argumentative. To start it off, they were unwilling to write down my order and although that should have been my first sign of leaving but since the waiter said he had it by heart and insisted, I stayed and it began after that....they got every item wrong to the last point as the food was specifically asked to be no onion no garlic...yet the gravy was filled with those and the staff weren't willing to accept it...the breads/chapatis were asked to be non buttered but still buttered and a type of bread asked to be buttered but was plain with a additional star of bread being cold...the soup has noodles already soaked and soggy made the whole thing wasteful...the naan was asked to be cheese naan but instead brought out paneer naan arguing that if you search on google paneer is cheese only while is still funny to me. At all everything about the food would have been accepted for a moment but the staff was so rude and unwilling to accept their mistakes that this restaurant can be...