Slug & Lettuce - Omni Centre Edinburgh — Restaurant in City of Edinburgh

Disgusted and extremely disappointed with our recent visit to the Slug and Lettuce Omni Cenre Edinburgh which completely ruined my daughter’s 21st Birthday.

A few weeks ago we visited Edinburgh to find a suitable restaurant for my daughter who has learning disability to celebrate her 21st Birthday with ourselves and three friends aged 20,21 & 21 all of which have varying degrees of learning disabilities. We decided the Slug and Lettuce had a nice menu and looked quite fancy and would make a lovely outing for the party. We booked a table at 6pm on Saturday 20th July and planned to go to the cinema afterwards so would be leaving the restaurant by 7:15pm. We noted we needed ID and made sure we had this with us when we set off.

We arrived in Edinburgh at 12pm and dropped off a 21st Birthday cake which also had a candle in the shape of 21. When we arrived at 6pm we were received by a very unwelcoming waiter/manager who said we would need to show ID immediately. He would not even show us to our table before this was done in the middle of the crowded restaurant.

We had four ID’s with us although one had been left in the car. We offered to go and retrieve this but when this very abrupt man found my daughter’s young Scot ID did not have a hologram on it he said there was no point getting the missing one from the car as we could not stay. I have never been asked for this hologram in the last 3 years of using this card. We advised him this had been booked for weeks and we were celebrating our daughter’s 21st birthday and would not be staying long as we had the cinema booked. He advised us we were best to leave as we would have to leave the restaurant by 7pm anyway. We advised him we would rather stay as we had nothing else booked and if we could be served quickly then we would leave by 7pm.

We were shown to our table at 6:10pm and tried to use the app to order . Despite trying three different phones we could not get the app to load and decided to order at the bar. At 6:20 when we were standing trying to order at the bar the same man found us again and advised us the wait for food was a minimum of 20 minutes and so we could not possibly have our food and eat it before he would force us to leave. He suggested we should just leave instead of trying to order.

Sadly we felt there was no choice other than to pack up and leave meaning my daughter who was proudly wearing her 21st Birthday badge had no birthday meal and we left admits many tears from the young people we had with us. We retrieved the cake and headed for the cinema, not at all the celebration we had planned.

We feel that there was definitely a degree of disability discrimination going on and the waiter/manager did not want a party like ours to be seen at this establishment. My daughter was the only one without the acceptable hologram on her ID and she cannot drink due to a medical condition. None of us were planning to drink alcohol anyway as this was an escorted group of young people with learning difficulties.

Surely common sense would prevail and no one could imagine that three adults in their 50-60s would pull off such an elaborate stunt with 21st cake and badges to get 4 young people into a drinking establishment when they were not even planning to drink.

This appears to be a perfect example of petty minded bureaucracy at its best.

If I had taken the time to read the poor reviews before booking I would have saved my daughter all the upset on her special day and...

I have previously visited several branches of the Slug and Lettuce in London, and always been very pleased with my visit, so I expected the same from our first visit to the Edinburgh branch - however, we were badly disappointed. We arrived through the bar, which was quite busy because of the football game that was about to start. The dining area, however, was very quiet, but it still took the staff close to 10 minutes to notice we were there and show us to a table.

We were after nachos, but weren't too happy to notice that nachos with chili was on the pricey side - however, as the menu stated that it was suitable for "3-4 people as a starter" we figured it must be a large portion, and would suit 2 people as a main just fine, and thus explain the price. We quickly made our choice and put our menus away to signal to the staff that we were ready to order, but for a long time we were ignored. I tried to catch the eye of every staff member that passed, but they all seemed to purposely look the other way. The wait would have been expected if the restaurant had been busy, but it was 3/4 empty, and the staff busied themselves with straightening chairs and wiping tables instead of serving customers!

In the end someone finally took our order, and as we expected by that time, we had to wait quite a while for our food - and when it finally turned up, it was without the chili we'd ordered. We told a member of staff about this, and she didn't offer any sort of apology, just wandered off to get us our chili. And what was even worse than the mistake in the order, the portion was tiny. We've had nachos in a lot of different places in Edinburgh, and the "sharing" portion provided here was smaller than a single person's portion anywhere else, and for double the price most places charge for that amount. The whole point of ordering a sharing plate of nachos is to get a lot of food, and as nachos really can't be that expensive to make we were really surprised to see the small amount of food that we got for our money, compared to many of the other portions that were on the menu at a cheaper price.

We left the restaurant extremely dissatisfied with the whole experience - we were still hungry, and we felt cheated considering the price vs portion size. It could have been worse, I suppose - at least the food tasted okay, but based on this experience we will never visit the Slug and...

Where to begin!!! (Visit 7th November - 4 people) It was my mums 70th birthday, we had booked a show a the playhouse so decided to go here for afternoon tea before it. Earlier in the year we had been to another Edinburgh Slug and lettuce for afternoon tea and it was amazing so was expecting a similar experience. How wrong was I. As soon as we got there, we were told that the scone delivery hadn't arrived so we're given the option of more sandwiches or snacks, we said snacks, no big deal. Walking though the bar to our table there was a really pungent smell, even my 9 year old asked why I smelled like the woman's toilet. Thankfully at the table, there was no smell. We waited 45mins by which point asked how much longer we would have to wait. Was told not long, another 10 mins and they brought over the 2 plates (see photo) sat it down and left. We all just looked at each other in disbelief for a few minutes. We have been to a few afternoon teas, usually in a nice tea set. Instead we got a plate of brownies that looked like they had halved a box of Mr Kiplings and sandwiches that had been slapped together and cut by a saw. I asked the waitess if I could speak to the manager. While waiting a woman from another table had came across and said they had did the exact same and were no getting food from menu. The table next to us, I assume we're waiting on the same thing, just got up and left. The manager eventually came over. I said that I was shocked that she thought that was acceptable to serve and charge £74? She didn't say much apologised said we could just order of the main menu. By this time we had just over 30mins before we had to leave, so I said we couldn't take the chance, considering it had now taken over an hour and half for halve a sandwich each. She said that she would comp all the costs as an apology, as I had paid a deposit, she had processed a refund for that element. We were obviously disappointed and hungry but we accepted that was the most she could do. We went got a few packets of chips from the shop. We are now over 2 weeks and no, refund or response to my emails. The money is not a lot but its the principle as they ruined part of a special day and they shouldn't promise things they are not planning to do. I have been showing people the picture and they laugh in disbelief that a company is trying to pass this off as...