KILN by MAC — Restaurant in Birmingham

My granddaughter and I come to the park and the kiln restaurant therein every week for the past 6 months. Every week we go to the Kiln and have our lunch. This week however when we arrived we were told by the young women on a desk that we had not seen before that we couldn't sit at our usual table even though the restaurant was really quiet and sparsely populated. When I questioned this she couldn't give an answer and so we were allowed to sit there. When I asked for a child seat for my granddaughter her response was ill get to it when I can but it took about 5 minutes for it to materialise even though we watched her doing nothing else. So we sat and waited for someone to take our order as is the norm. The young woman concerned took an order from a clearly disabled person and totally ignored us. I might add I too am disabled but my disabilities are not visable. After about 10 minutes of her blatantly ignoring us I approached the counter and asked whether someone could take our order. The young man I spoke with approached the woman at the front desk who informed him that everything had changed and all orders needed to be placed with her at the front desk. The obvious question is why were we not informed about this upon arrival and being seated. The young woman's attitude was extremely rude and dismissive and yet I had not seen her behave in this way with any of the other customers. I was questioned by one of the other wait staff who were used to our visits as to why we were leaving and I explained the situation and he was very apologetic. We had never had any problems prior to this and I could not understand it. However I did note that I was the only Black person in the restaurant so perhaps that had a bearing. As we were leaving I questioned her conduct and the fact that we had not been advised of the new regime even though she had seen me waiting patiently to place my order. I am so disappointed that I received neither customer service or apology. I will not be using the Kiln at Cannon Hill Park again because of the bad conduct of one...

We tend to stop by after parkrun for a drink and a chat where we understand it’s busy, but often we find ourselves extremely disappointed by the service and the quality of drinks.

Flat whites are never hot enough and generally take far too long to order and then to receive the drink.

Last Saturday we ordered an oat milk flat white, a flat white and a green smoothie, with a croissant. I asked to take the croissant there and then which caused the lady serving to roll her eyes. The drinks took about 15 mins to arrive which is standard, but like most weeks, the waitress didn’t know which was the oat milk and which was the normal flat white. We finished our flat whites before they went cold, but shockingly I got the smoothie about 15 mins after we’d finished the coffees, having had to go up and enquire twice about it. No apology received. No urgency. Guy manning the hot food hatch where the smoothie eventually appeared from was too busy on his phone and almost took pleasure in my frustration with a grin on his face the whole time. His only feedback “it’ll be ready shortly”. Not what I want to hear after half an hour of waiting already.

Would avoid this cafe and go elsewhere as we often leave frustrated and regretting...

Reasonable value for money. Daft ordering system.

The general ambience fits in well with the general vibe of the arts centre. Seating is comfortable with the place being generally clean and tidy though with some sticky tables.

The QR code ordering system has never worked on any phone during any of our visits so we've had use the 'host station' where a usually helpful person has taken our order. On one visit I lost my seat through having to order 'manually' so left and came back later.

The wait for food is usually over 20 minutes for a simple cake and tea even in a not too busy café. The tea was OK and stretched to two cups. The carrot cake was a strange mixture of Christmas cake and marmalade sponge: slightly too heavy, a bit dry and with pink icing. But oddly it tasted great the first time I had it but so-so the second time.

On our last visit, March '23, this host station was no longer there and the area closed temporarily due to being full.

All in all it's a bit hit and miss in terms of access, the ordering system and the quality...