Boston Tea Party Harborne — Restaurant in Birmingham

Very disappointed with my experience on 1st May 2025. We booked for a colleague’s birthday lunch, but drinks arrived only after we’d finished eating. When we raised this, the staff member was argumentative, spoke over us, and offered no apology. She raised her voice, blamed us for something that wasn’t our fault, and didn’t check with her colleagues about what had been agreed by the restaurant itself.

Basic manners dictate treating customers with respect. This was extremely poor customer service and completely ruined the occasion.

Another colleague followed us out as we left to offer free lemonade and apologise, which we genuinely appreciated. However, this incident should never have occurred in the first place.

I will not be returning due to this incident. I strongly urge you to address this matter with the colleague involved, and ensure they understand the importance of treating customers with respect.

Update following General Manager’s reply:

Thank you for your response. I appreciate the apology, but I stand by my review.

The food was good and I did acknowledge that in my original review - but that does not excuse the poor service. A staff member reacted aggressively to a simple question, which was completely uncalled for. I’ve never experienced anything like it, and despite the food, I will not be returning, which is a shame.

You mention your team is young and may have felt intimidated. I’m unsure what was intimidating about a calm question so it would be good to discuss this with you further - especially when it came after my colleague had already gone inside twice to chase up our drinks. By the time they arrived, we had finished our meal. If staff respond this way to basic service issues, more training is clearly needed.

You also said it’s concerning that we left reviews on multiple platforms. We had a genuinely bad experience - these platforms exist for honest feedback so others do not receive the same treatment.

There was no misunderstanding on our part. We confirmed with your team that we would click-and-collect and dine in and this was stated in our booking. The issue wasn’t the process - it was how we were treated.

I do appreciate that you’re concerned about your reputation, but our experience matters just as much.

That said, I acknowledged the supervisor’s apology and appreciated the kind gesture from the staff member who later offered us lemonade. My review reflects both the negatives and the positives, and is fair.

I hope this makes it clear that service is just as important as the food. I’m happy to discuss this in...

When we arrived we were told to sit where we liked. We sat and ordered. Once the waitress (I think she is called Marjena) arrived with our cafes, we told her the unfinished plates on the table are from the previous client and if she can take them and clean the table. She aggressively put our cafes on the dirty table, and removed only half of the previous client’s plates (also almost spilled the old cafes on us while removing them). We were thinking she is coming back to clean the rest, but she never arrived because she was just busy chatting with the bartender. After 5-8 minutes, we went to the bar and asked if someone can clean our table, they said yes, but of course she took another 5 minutes to come to our table and before she finished her chit chat standing at the bar. Once arrived (with a very unsatisfied and aggressive face), she again only removed part of the remaining stuff. So I had to call her out and ask if she can remove everything. At this moment she started arguing with me that this is our fault to sit on a dirty table! (What? Are you for real?, we were thinking). Clearly not only she was incapable of cleaning a single table (not in a single run but even in two), she was also extremely rude and willing to argue with the client rather than doing her job? This made us think, while drinking our finally served cafe on a clean table, if she is really that much unsatisfied with her job, or that much untrained? We concluded, both are impossible and unimaginable given the...

Called in for lunch today for a first time visit. Staff were attentive and after a short wait for a table to clear we were seated quickly with a warm warm by the friendly member of staff. We opted for two meals from the brunch menu and two hot drinks. The app for ordering wasn’t loading due to a Wi-Fi error so had to order at the front desk which was a shame as had to join a small queue & would have preferred ordering at the table. Our drinks arrived quickly but were just medium warm, not hot as we like, we drank them and didn’t raise an issue as the staff were very busy. The eggs on both meals were hardly warm, in fact my wife’s was cold. We told the staff about this and the quickly changed my wife’s egg as I’d by then eaten mine. However, the replacement was also just barely warm ! We enjoyed the flavours of both meals but with our Luke warm hot drinks & the disappointing eggs we didn’t think the meals were worth the £34 or so we paid. The hash brown on my wife’s salt beef hash dish was also not what you’d call hot which we think it should have been (it would also have kept the egg hot lol) We’ll have to see if we venture back as first impressions stick don’t they, shame as the setting is lovely and our experience could have been much better I think with a little extra...