All Bar One George St Edinburgh — Restaurant in City of Edinburgh

All Bar One George St Edinburgh , Great pub, unless you are BLACK!

Update to this, I have tried to contact Mitchells & Butlers with no success about this incident and their racially biased policies,but they are not interested!

have We were 4 men in our 50/60’s visiting Edinburgh for the Rugby and one of our group was black. It was early evening and having just had dinner, we went for a drink at All Bar One. We ordered a beer and stood by 3 Locals drinking at a long table by the bar. While we were chatting to them, one of them accidentally knocked over a glass, which smashed on the tiled table top. My friend (who is black) cheered, as you do when someone drops something. A few moments later, a lady from a couple of tables down came over and started to shout and be abusive to my black friend, saying breaking glasses was not funny. He was the only non white person in the whole pub, and he had been sitting at least 3 to 4 feet away from the local gentleman who had broken the glass. We explained that the gentleman (not in our group) had knocked the glass over accidentally. The staff came over and cleared the broken glass and the lady went back to her table but continued to say abusive things and give my black friend the finger. We ignored her, not wanting to give such small minded people any attention. The locals who had knocked the glass over were very apologetic and embarrassed by the clear racism of this other customer and they offered to buy us a drink - we thanked them but declined their kind offer.

I went to the bar to order another round and the bar person said we couldn't have another drink, as a customer had complained about us. We had done absolutely nothing wrong and could only think that a racist person had complained, as she didn't like black people in the pub. I asked to see the manager, as I felt this was outrageous in today’s society, even though my black friend said we should just leave and not make a fuss. The manager was very polite; she explained that it wasn't because this customer had complained, but we were being asked to leave because one of the bar staff believed we were drunk. At this point we had 3 beers, (2 with dinner and 1 in All Bar One). I said to the manager that clearly we weren't drunk and this was because one her regular customers had taken offence at my black friend.

She stated very politely that if a member of staff raised a concern that a person was drunk it was company policy not to serve that person. I asked if she thought any of us was drunk, she said no, but the All Bar One policy was clear, because a member of staff had raised a concern (which I'm not convinced had happened but it was the simplest reason to give) she had to follow through. I pointed out, that at best this policy was open to racial bias and as with this situation out right racism. She said that as a manager she didn't have the power to make a judgment call based on the situation and she could only follow the policy. She said I could go to the website to raise on official complaint if I wanted. While I fully intend to raise a complaint, I'm convinced this issue will not be addressed. It's far simpler just to say we were drunk, even though the only black person in the pub was being asked to leave, even though he had done nothing, the best we will get is apologetic platitudes.

The racist person shouted at us, celebrating their victory, as the bouncer, again very politely escorted us out the pub, apologising for the incident. The 3 locals who had accidently smashed the glass (but weren’t being asked to leave), also left the pub in disgust at our treatment.

All Bar One, you need to better than this! I believe the only way I can make a difference is to vote with my feet and never visit another All Bar One and will ask others to do the same. I intend to tell everyone I meet about this story. I realise that as I tell this story, the injustice I felt, at that moment, my friend has had to live with his whole life.

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Worst experience I've ever had: This restaurant ruined my graduation.

I selected this restaurant for my graduation meal as it seemed to have good reviews. I had a party of 10 originally and tried to book online but it would not let me due to party size and said I had to contact the restaurant. I tried calling multiple times during 1 week and left numerous voicemail however, this did not work so I had to make the trip into the restaurant.

I made the booking and they emailed me a few weeks later asking for us to decide what we wanted before due to the party size and to ensure they had the right food. This was a good idea and we emailed our order across to them but they didn't even confirm they had received it.

Then 2 days before the graduation 2 of the guests had to drop out so I tried calling again multiple times to change the order but once again they didn't answer the phone on any attempt. I went back to the restaurant and expressed my frustration and talked to a supervisor who was very friendly and stated there were no managers working at that moment in time so he wrotte down my email and phone number stating "a manager will get in contact with you tomorrow"assuring me that he was working and he will make sure this is done.

Suprise suprise they did not get in contact with me and this was the day before my graduation so I was worried we would get charged for this food so I made my third trip to the restaurant to try and sort this simple problem. When arriving I asked to talk to a manager. I was directed to gentleman drinking a pint with a laptop in front of him. He accessed my booking and he said that he removed the food we no longer needed. I once again expressed my frustration with the lack of communication and he didn't display any empathy or even offer an apology.

I left feeling that this restaurant was already displaying 'red flags' however, due to my graduation being the next day I had no choice as I didn't belive I would get somwhere else on sutch short notice.

On the day we turned up and I chose to put my previous experience aside so we could enjoy this meal. It started off well however when bringing the food out it was very unorganised and were left waiting for a long period of time. Then the food that had supposedly been cancelled appeared and they had missed other people's meals who were there. The idea of us giving them our order before the day seemed pointless at this point and the food that did appear was cold as it seemed like it had been sitting for a period of time.

Drinks were ordered that never appeared and it took nearly 3 hours to have a 2 course meal resulting in us missing a reservation at another bar. As my fellow graduates were getting free bottles of proseco from across the road it felt like we were getting completely mugged off.

We expressed our frustration once again and asked for a manager and the same gentleman from the day before came over. He said that all he could do was apologise and we then had to ask for this to be reflected in the bill. He returned with a new bill only offering a 10% discount which seemed insulting. At this point we just wanted to get out of there so we paid and left

This meal was meant to be a celebration but turned into a stressful nightmare. I can safely say I will never return to this restaurant and that they ruined an evening that was meant to be a...

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