Luben's Pizza — Restaurant in Folkestone and Hythe District

If you are vegan or especially if you have a food allergy avoid at all costs, it's not worth the risk!!

Went to Luben's to have a meal with my friend who I'd not seen for 5 years. We were looking forward to a leisurely afternoon and good food. We were he only 2 people in the restaurant so it looked positive for a peaceful meal - how wrong could we be...

The menu looks impressive with lots of vegan and allergy specific options however this company clearly takes no care to actually deliver those dishes, and their staff do not take responsibility for the service provided. A complete disgrace and downright dangerous for anyone who needs the confidence of an allergy controlled meal. Having spoken to other friends since this instance this is not the first time this has happened by a long way.

My friend ordered vegan mac 'n cheese. When our food arrived she took a bite and told me she thought it had ham/bacon in it, when I had a look it clearly was full of meat. We complained. The waitress apologised, then said that whilst she was apologising it wasn't actually her responsibility it was that of the kitchen... She said we wouldn't have to pay for that dish and that she'd arrange for a vegan dish to be prepared, and offered us drinks as an apology. She took the drink order for my friend then walked off, so we had to call her back for the other.

So I was left eating alone waiting for my friends meal to arrive. Her food was delivered, by which time I was halfway through mine. The dish that her food was delivered in was piping hot, but the pasta was cold. Not just not hot but cold. We have since deduced that for it to be that cold it had to have been defrosted, a minute in the microwave for a cold dish would have delivered a hotter result. It was revolting.

Called the waitress back. I suggested that after such a double fault she should just let us walk away our entire meal had been spoilt. Any enjoyment of my food had disappeared as I was eating alone. I asked what would have happened if my friend had been allergic to milk, as her non-vegan dish would clearly have contained milk. The waitress apologised again and said it was beyond her control. I asked what she meant, and she said she was just front of house so she wasn't responsible.

She offered to charge me half price for my (half-eaten) meal and to charge us for our drinks and starter. Clearly in the absence of anyone prepared to take responsibility we weren't going to get any sensible response so we paid and went home.

We called later and spoke to a manager once home - he was super apologetic and said that someone would call to give us a total refund. A few days later we received a call to take my card details. I've only received a refund of a fraction of the cost.

Epic fail, an insult, and a failure to even recover...

I have to congratulate Luben's Pizza as I didn't think it was possible to make a bad pizza.

I love pizza, it's one of my absolutely favourite foods. I've had many of them over the years, varying in quality from freshly cooked and served in beautiful seafront restaurants in Italy to all the way down to the lowly frozen £1 pizza from a supermarket, but I've never had a disappointing pizza before. I didn't even think it was possible.

I left the restaurant in a daze. I'd eaten lightly in the morning in preparation for what I'd expected to be an enjoyable meal. My head was spinning, unable to understand that I had not enjoyed a pizza. Even though I had a full stomach, it was as if my mouth was still expecting food. It had been confused throughout the meal as I had forced in slice after slice of pizza without experiencing the slightest pleasure.

(I'm far too quiet, shy and reserved to ever say anything in a restaurant, though I'm not sure it would have achieved anything here.)

What was wrong with the pizza? The taste, or rather the almost complete lack of taste. I really don't understand how a variety of clearly top quality ingredients could be combined and give almost no flavour. You could take a pizza base and print on a picture of the toppings and it'd have much the same effect.

I ordered crispy bacon as an additional topping and I tried a few pieces in isolation. It was bad enough they'd managed to make a boring pizza, but even the bacon had almost no flavour. How do you make bacon bad?

My wife gave me a small slice of her pizza to try and I have to admit it was a little bit better. It had a tiny hint of flavour, like it had been stored in a room with a pizza or had been about twenty feet downwind of somebody spraying a pizza scented deodorant.

On the plus side, they had really cool sinks in the toilet. They were the absolute highlight of my trip. I now wish I'd taken a picture of them as I'm definitely...

Good food, nice environment, but a bit pricey for what it is. I arrived before the rest of my party, was shown the location of the table and the waiter started to walk off before I had even reached the table, so that I had to call him back to order a drink. I think he expected me to wait for the others to arrive, but it is standard procedure to show someone to the table, offer to take their coat, wait for them to be seated and offer them a drink while they wait, especially since I had already informed him that the rest of the party had been delayed by about 15 minutes, so I was sitting at the large 8 seat table alone for all that time. I was not offered anything to eat during this time either. Also, coat rack would be useful at this time of year. I had to drape my coat over the back of my chair and it was all dusty when I picked it up, so the floors are obviously not as clean as they should be. Other than that the food was good and once the rest of our party had arrived, the service improved substantially (but obviously Nellie No Mates doesn't warrant good service) and the food was very good, albeit a bit pricey for pizza. Small starter, main, drinks and dessert totalled about £45/head. We were not offered pizza cutters and the pizzas were not precut; the knives provided were utterly blunt, so trying to cut them up really didn't work and we all ended up having to tear the pizzas into pieces, which made them look quite messy. There was cold (probably refrigerated) rocket sprinkled on all the pizzas, so they went cold very quickly. Overall I gave 3 stars, because the good food and environment were let down by the prices, the uncut, not very warm pizza, the substandard service that I received and the lack of cleanliness...