Itihaas — Restaurant in Birmingham

Booked table for 17 for xmas party.

General manager has terrible customer service skills, was rude and downright unpleasant to deal with. Kept pushing us towards the set menu which not everyone on the table wanted, refused to let one or two individuals out of the arrangement saying everyone had to partake, even ignoring our offer to segregate those who did not want the set menu to another table. We had to request the normal menu at least 6 times and even then he was still pushing us towards it resulting in delays of at least an hour.

Then he refused to take individual payments saying one person had to clear the entire bill. During the following argument we actually phoned another well known restaurant not too far away to see if they could accommodate the 17 of us. Unfortunately not so we had to stay, which was amusing as Itihaas was half empty. One of my guests actually left citing the long waiting times and the managers attitude. Other staff overheard our comments while we waited for food and ended up apologising for the managers lack of customer service skills, and actually did a fairly good job of trying to turn around the experience.

The food came out after a long time and between our initial argument something changed as people were then allowed to pay individually, leading some of us to wonder what the argument at the beginning was over.

Food was mediocre and overpriced for the quality. On previous years we normally spend a few hours after food buying drinks however everyone left sharpish after the food was finished to get away from the atmosphere the manager had created. This combined with inflexibility over the set menus resulted in us spending about half of what we could have and a fairly disappointing experience for all involved. Not the service I expect from a restaurant that purports to offer a fine dining experience. Manager was also shouting at his staff in-front of guests like they were absolute dirt. Disgusting attitude to have and certainly not the right way to get the best out of your staff.

To top everything off my colleagues informed me that whilst speaking in Hindi the restaurant manager made racial references to Caucasian members of the party, insulting them saying "they didn't have a clue what they were ordering". Absolutely disgusting.

Reflecting on the experience we almost expected it to be part of a TV show to see our reactions, sadly this was not the case. If you are the owners of this establishment, id seriously look at replacing your general manager with someone with basic customer service skills, as antagonising your guests isnt the best way to ensure repeat custom or achieve the highest yield per head. Save your business while you...

PLEASE READ AT LEAST PART OF THIS REVIEW TO AVOID MAKING A TERRIBLE MISTAKE!!! We booked a wedding with this company, not just as the caterers, but as the entire event management team. First of all, the food was very good, that is only thing I can say was okay, definite compliments to the chef.

DO NOT TRUST THIS COMPANY WITH THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF YOUR LIFE! They cause so much stress and ruin a day you have poured 10s of £1000s into. Our photographer and videographer also mentioned how bad they were. Our venue, stanbrook abbey, have closed their contract with them. Many of the hotel staff telling us they are glad this was the last ithiaas wedding, as they are so hard to work with and they create problem after problem. All of our guests also pointed out how terrible this company is. We had a great experience the day before with a different company and venue (jenkinsons/ bredenbruy Court barns)

First of all, the months of planning were an absolute shambles, the final itinerary was still not complete until the day before (we were already 2 days into a 3 day wedding at this point) This updated itinerary was not even handed to the team on the day, they had an old one! And they wait till the last minute to inform you of lots of extra charges, when it's for too late to you do anything about it.

Every request was met with a roadblock. We were quite often told that the venue had refused something. Then on discussion with the venue, we found this was a constant excuse, the venue had no issues!!

On the day the servers were incredibly rude, to all of our invited guests! The bar staff were absolutely hopeless, they were asked to default to single measures and were filling glasses of spirits 3/4s full. Telling our guests we had run out of drinks, when we had not at all!!!!! So many guests said they had to lean over the bar to point at full bottles even at the very start of the evening!

We had so many moments where there was not a staff member in the room to do things like turn down the lights or even extinguish a centrepiece on fire! I can go on, but hopefully this has been enough to warn anyone planning a wedding to stay away.

Luckily this was my sisters wedding which I was planning. By the end of the night I felt pulled apart in every direction trying to keep things somewhat on track. If the bride and groom had to deal.with this I cannot imagine what the memory of the wedding will have been.

Don't trust ITHIAAS - their reputation means they couldn't give two hoots about your...

I wish to caution somebody willing to book in an event with Itihaas, Birmingham. I had a terrible experience in trying to recover a deposit refund during COVID and eventually ended in losing £ 3,000 in the process. I had booked a Wedding Event for 300 guests to be held in August 2020. We paid £6000 as a deposit for the catering and venue. It was paid by 2 credit cards @3000 each by me and the bride's mother. Unfortunately, the event had to be cancelled with mutual consent due to COVID regulations. As per the prevailing government regulations we were entitled to a full refund barring some expenses incurred by the merchant in the process. We were given a list of expenses incurred amounting to £1494 which were highly manipulated and unreal. We were charged £ 200 for a food tasting event which never happened and charged for the time spend in e-mails, telephone conversation and venue viewing. These, we believed were a part of overhead expenses and were not permissible as expenses incurred by the merchant. We did not receive any services and were entitled to full refund. We still offered a liberal £ 500 to close the dispute but was declined . We were offered a truncated refund of £ 4506 out of £ 6000 as an unconditional offer in April 2020. We had no other option to seek justice and to apply for a charge back from our credit card providers. The process of chargeback was prolonged due to COVID shutdown, and we eventually recovered £ 3000 from one of the credit card providers. Unfortunately, the other credit card providers could not recover our deposit due to delayed and poor representation. We were already frustrated by the ongoing saga and eventually asked Itihaas to honour the initial unconditional offer and pay us the balance of £ 1506 . To our surprise the management refused to pay the balance on the grounds that we used a charge back to seek justice and recover our dues. The management decided to pocket a sum of £ 1506 which was initially offered in the conflict unconditionally. This was extremely apalling, and we felt cheated by the Itihaas management. I will strongly recommend anybody willing to book an event to think twice. You are in for an ordeal and could end up in losing a...