Makla & The Fez Lounge — Restaurant in England

I’m really sorry to leave a bad review but I’m quite disappointed. My partner and I have been coming to Maklas for meals for a whole year together, and we have always returned as the food was always brilliant, good quality and the service was also good. So because of this- to celebrate an important anniversary we chose to have our anniversary dinner at Maklas. We came before our booking early (7:30 when we were meant to be there at 8). We said in our booking that we were celebrating our anniversary and maybe they could do something nice. We sat down and were asked what we wanted to order and we wanted a little more time. They then left us for 15 or more mins (I did count) without coming to take our order. Then they came over with a few candles which were nice but that was sort of all we got. The menu on Sundays is different, which I get, but it wasn’t a huge range of choice but we decided on what we wanted and ordered. We also asked about potential deserts and spoke about Baklava to the waitress. We got our food quickly (good), but unfortunately, the food was quite underwhelming and less nice than what we are used to. As an anniversary dinner we were quite disappointed. The cocktail was good though. We finished and the waitress asked for last drink orders, which we didn’t want. She didn’t mention anything about desserts. She then stood chatting to some customers for 20 mins whilst we waited to order pudding. My partner then pointed out that the kitchen seemed closed. We asked the waitress after she finally came over about dessert, and she said the kitchen was closed. We said we’d had no prior warning! Considering they knew we were celebrating an anniversary I found it incredibly bad customer service. She then saw we were upset so offered to serve the baklava herself even though the kitchen was closed. Obviously, that was nice of her but she should have let us know about last food orders in advance. It left a sour taste on the anniversary. We were honestly felt like we were rushed out at 9:30 and were hardly there for 1.5 hours. Now understand, I write this review as someone who’s worked in a plethora of different bars, pubs, restaurants, vip events, etc- so I’m not one to be unsympathetic to waiting staff. However, if I’m paying almost £50 a head of my hard earned money for an anniversary dinner which they were pre told about, I do expect a certain level of satisfaction. I do not feel satisfied with the meal and service offered, and myself and my partner were very disappointed and upset- and it dampened the evening.

Even at a Greene King pub I worked at, we made sure to make any special requests/ arrangements nice and special for our customers, and we charged half as much as Makla’s do. My partner who is very local doesn’t want to return after...

Bad service, expensive, food adequate but not for the money. Pretty poor all around considering expensive price point. Staff seemed rather clueless and were very slow. 3 people to serve 4 total tables through our stay duration , 2 groups of 4, 2 groups 2 (including us) and 3 takeaway orders over a total of around 1hr 30mins. I do this alone where I work! One girl asked, how do we do takeaways when someone came to order, she got a reply of - what do you mean? From her colleague. We ate in, taking our inital drinks order took far too long so we ordered food at the same time. (We were the only people in here at this moment in time), chocolate milkshake £4 consisted of little pieces of ice in a very thing vanilla shake. Clearly a refrozen ice cream was used, unsure if she gave me the incorrect flavour or if there just is no flavour to their shakes. Halloumi was lovely - but you can't really go wrong there, £7 for 4 thin slices seemed excessive though. Chicken for main meal was fully charred on one side (the face down side) totally inedible, the face up side was nice but for £12 you expect more. The mixed chicken and beef looked slightly better but still over cooked, for £16 thats just nuts. In total 1 homous with cardboard bread from a packet crucified behind the till in front of you, 1 minimal halloumi, and a chicken and mixed main with 2 drinks cost us just over £50. Which we don't mind paying if its up to scratch. We didn't bother complaining due to the staff. I had to go up to pay the bill after a long wait of no one coming over despite this not being allowed with covid around. The izettle card machine is probably the dirtiest one I've ever seen around. Again not covid friendly and clearly hasn't been cleaned for quite some time. Some staff were dressed in dirty white trainers and mid calf excercise leggings which was quite odd for somewhere clearly trying to be a quality establishment. The chef asking for his head meds loud enough for all to hear was also something that made the experience just that little less enjoyable. All in all a shocking experience for somewhere we had very high hopes for on arrival, ...

So this was a very special date because that afternoon my date asked me to be his girlfriend. After 3.5 months of consistently dating slowly in London we were now official. Therefore this was a celebration meal. He booked this restaurant as he knew I liked Middle Eastern food, particularly Moroccan and Lebanese so he booked this restaurant. It was very busy when we arrived, but we had made a booking so we were okay.

I did like the decor and the atmosphere as well as the vibe was pretty cool. It was quite a hot day in Bournemouth and we were celebrating as I was now officially his girlfriend.

There was plenty of choice on the menu which made it quite hard to pick what to eat so I was looking at what other people were having and I saw the lady on the table opposite me having the lamb shank tagine which looked amazing, so I thought I would have that . My boyfriend ordered the beef meatball tagine but what I found strange was it arrived with the starters and they didn’t bring his rice so he couldn’t really eat it with the rice.

Mine arrived with the rice which I ate and it was amazing, but there was a lot of food. We couldn’t really gauge how much to order and if I were to return, I would only order a main because the portions were big. My portion was big. The manager was really nice and took my boyfriend‘s rice off the bill because he never got it and apologise profusely for this as well. We were too full for dessert and I I took the houmous and olives and pita bread home. The houmous was really delicious. It was very very fresh. I wasn’t that keen on the calamari, it was okay but nothing special. However the main course was amazing. For the amount of food that we had it was reasonably priced.

We would like to come back here again but I’d like to come back in the winter and just have the lamb shank tagine with some rice and I wouldn’t bother with any starters. I would literally just have that main but it was a nice local restaurant and I do love Moroccan food. It was more of a celebration for me for the fact that I was now my date’s official ...