Haiku Cape Town CBD — Restaurant in City Centre

Haiku - Asian Tapas and an Attempted Fleecing

I have been a regular diner at Haiku since they opened in Cape Town in 2005 and a staunch supporter of the Bukhara Group over many years .

I will not be be back !

Celebrated a birthday dinner with a table of 5 last night . The food was everything one expects from the Group ; good, innovative, stylish, not cheap and accompanied by slick and attentive service .

My issue came with the presentation of the bill. A ten percent service charge was added (not disclosed on the menu) and “ hidden “ above the sub total line . I have no problem with this practice in itself but personally prefer a tip to be discretionary based on the overall dining and service experience (in this instance it would have been more than the obligatory ten percent) and do not really feel mandatory service charges are warranted on small tables .

But by far my bigger problem was a fraudulent and dishonest attempt to encourage a further and additional tip, by the Waiter highlighting a second tip line ( after the bill had been totaled with the mandatory tip included )and the and the construct of the bill, which encouraged further tipping over and above the mandatory charge already pre printed and billed . In addition, the waiter failed to disclose that a tip had been included and the unsuspecting would simply have tipped twice , encouraged by the highlighting of the secondary vacant tip line .

When challenged on the issue the Waiter advised that “ the senior Waiters had told him to do it “ . I took the issue up with the Manager who advised me, with an air of indifference that it was simply “the way the till slips were printed and there was nothing he could do”. I did say that a disclosure by the Waiter and control by Management on what was hand written on the bill may be a partial solution to their apparent printing issues .

I expressed my displeasure and left a business card with an invitation for someone...

I unfortunately had been to both of the restaurants in Cape Town in the past two days (the second one was by accident because a friend wanted to go and I didn't connect the dots to figure out it was the same owner, despite different locations). The one by the waterfront had good attitude about the service but unfortunately the service was pretty bad - had to wait for a very long time for the drinks, the food came at random intervals but all much too long considering that only my gf and I ordered. Weirdly the menu lacked quality saki for a highly Japanese themed restaurant.. The waiter had a good attitude but seemed very overwhelmed and couldn't manage the amount of tables he had. The sushi chef had to come out to apologize an hour and 45 minutes in about the wait... we couldn't get about half of the food we ordered and needed to leave at the 2 hour mark. Overall, great attitude, good food (not great) but couldn't deliver on with the service.

The second establishment was much worse. After waiting 30 minutes past our reservation time, we finally got seated. When we showed up we were informed that there were many people ahead of us with reservations as well, like it was our problem! After buying a bottle of sake and paying a nice tip, we got seated 20 minutes later. After seating at the table for 15 minutes, I tried to grab a waiter's attention to get some water and menus - he literally avoided me by rudely running around me. Stunned, I followed him down to the employees corner where he continued to try to avoid me but had nowhere to go - I asked if we can have a waiter and some menus and I got some grunt response which I hoped meant that we would get service soon? After another 15 more minutes of absolutely no acknowledgement at...

I don’t know what happened in the kitchen on that day, but I unfortunately won’t be visiting again. I’m wildly suprised by all the great reviews and stars, as that’s why we chose Haiku as our restaurant of choice.

made a reservation with a staff member, when we arrived no one was informed. But this was not even a problem because it was quiet, so we got seated easily. lighting is so dark. It feels like 11pm in there. food took so long to arrive ordered the 12 piece sushi platter for R300: it was a disaster. There was more rice than fish, the fried sushi was so hard because it wasn’t coated in tempura batter, ginger looked a few days old, the assortment was a joke (2 salmon roses, 2 tuna nigiri, 4 over fried tuna California roll, 4 tuna and Salomon California roll) the water said there was prawn but we didn’t get any in our platter. it was a very quiet Sunday, only our table and another table of 4 to look after. Our waiter was giving ‘not interested’ to be at work on that long weekend. Not disrespectful, but just super lethargic and whatever. Took so like to bring the cutlery and the bill. prawn toast would have been so tasty but way too salty. The tuna tacos for R195: the tacos were extremely oily. The tuna was great, a bit stingy with the guac. this seems to be a high end restaurant, so note that the sushi and dim sum come in quantities of 2/3/4/6 and it’s unspecified on the menu!

I wanted to order noodles and the duck but after the mediocre food and service we called it a night. Went home...