Kaya Meze bar — Restaurant in Great Britain

I have no words to describe what we experienced today... It's up to the readers to name the following service: I contacted Kaya Meze Bar by phone to book a table for 24 people, booking done, deposit requested of £480 to confirm the booking (fair enough It was expected). Payment done over the phone, which was also fine. Today when we arrived at the restaurant and for my surprised they had two tables for the booking! And even more disappointing not with enough seats for everyone. Luckily the booking for 6 people didn't turn up so they managed to add more tables and chairs so they could accommodate our booking previously confirmed and paid! They started taking the orders bringing some drinks etc When the food came the orders were wrong and some other food was missing on top of that two vegetarian people had the unpleasant experience of tasting lamb in their “vegetarian” meals!! Polity I informed them what happened and explained the situation, they offered a replacement but we were fine to just eat salad falafel and hummus) Later on the same person helping to serve the food, brought the bill and informed us that the table will be needed in 5 minutes (this person was wearing black gloves when he was serving the food and to handle the bill which makes me think about the hygiene standards in this place) We didn't even finished the main meal! We requested some time at least to finish the food and he declined. He was in such a rush for the payment to be made so I decided to check the bill carefully before paying as it was a big group. After the experience I had since I arrived, I wasn't surprised when I found that some items were charged multiple times, some of them never came, and what amused me was the fact that the “vegetarian” lamb meals were also charged!!! I requested the bill to be reviewed and rectified. while waiting, the business owner noticed that we weren't happy and came to speak to us, we explained everything that happened he apologised and said that it shouldn't happen. The person again wearing black gloves came back with the new bill, I asked the owner who that person was and for my surprise he informed me that he was the manager of the restaurant!!! I could see The business owner was so embarrassed with this despicable attitude from the manager. I feel sorry for this poor man, which probably invested a lot of money in building up his business for this “Manager” with no clue in customer service, management and business knowledge to ruin his business and result in this review. Everyone on my team was disgusted with the service and with the way we have been treated and definitely we will not be coming back and for sure we don't recommend this...

Read good reviews about this restaurant, so we decided to try it out as we like and know Turkish and Middle Eastern food really well. Well, for us it wasn't a 5 star experience. But lets start from the beginning. We arrived around 4.30pm, had a warm welcome and got seated by the window when the rest of the restaurant was almost empty. I know many restaurants practice this for enticing others in, but don't like to be the one on display, but we went along with the hostesses suggestion. The menus were brought, 3 meal menus and one drink menu. We proceeded to order and as it was a triple birthday celebration, we went all out and ordered drinks, starters, main courses, deserts and cocktails. We were really looking forward to one of the starters, baba ganoush, as it's one of our favourites. Whilst the hummus, cacik and others were OK, the baba ganoush was NOT baba ganoush. When we mentioned it to the young waiter who was overseeing our table, he insisted that it is. Several times. We let it go as it was pointless arguing with him, but were annoyed when he was forcefully telling us that's how this dish is supposed to be. The mains were nice, but for the price they charge, we'd expected more meat to be included. E.g.: the mixed shish came with 3 pieces of chicken and 3 pieces of lamb. The accompaniments (rice or bulgur) were cold. Another thing we were looking forward to was the baklava. Sadly, this was the greatest disappointment: a small piece of cold baklava with almost no nuts in it was split in half and icy, subpar chocolate ice-cream was wedged in the middle, ruining the consistency of it all. Reinventing a classical desert only works if you make it better, not worse. The cocktails were really good, no complaints there. All together we are giving it 3 stars and will likely find other Turkish restaurants to go to in the future as we like the authentic flavours and kind waiters who don't antagonize their customers. Must add that out of our trio, 2 work in restaurants, 1 is a chef in a high-end restaurant in London and all 3 of us know how to and make baba ganush. We didn't take photos, as we wanted to enjoy the meal, not...

Yesterday, my friend held her wedding reception at this venue, even though she had booked it for the wedding lunch well in advance. Unfortunately, the service we experienced was subpar. With around 30 guests, we endured lengthy waits of 1-2 hours for each food serving. Basic requests, like water for the table, took an excessive amount of time, and even a simple music change request was denied, citing other customers downstairs. This refusal felt offensive, especially considering our substantial bill of over £1000. It left us questioning whether our treatment was influenced by our group being predominantly black. The insinuation that our dissatisfaction might be related to our race added to the disappointment. When our group was leaving law and behold all the waiting staff suddenly appeared including the manager with smiles on their faces as if they couldn’t wait for us to leave! The manager had the audacity to also ask “we hope the service was good?” . There’s certain things that we would have overlooked but we were treated very badly and my friend didn’t get to enjoy her wedding reception as much as she should have. You guys should be ashamed of yourselves. Throughout the whole day we were respectful and polite , we caused no problems whatsoever so when we heard that statement “there’s other customers downstairs” this hit the nail in the coffin. They were literally playing 80s slow jams the whole time but as we were about to leave that’s when they changed the music, what does that translate to? A young couple celebrating their wedding reception and you play 80s slow jams, ? we were also paying customers and deserved high quality customer service to endure that the bride and groom had a special day. Very disappointing, very discriminatory service and very sad. We will be filing a formal complaint for poor customer service we received. If I could give —5 for the customer...