Alkis Restaurant — Restaurant in London

Hello. I placed a delivery order with you in the early hours of Sunday morning. I was told that I'm out of your delivery zone, but in the past, I had been told that a minimum £15 order would be OK which is quite reasonable. The person taking my order explained that Kofte was unavailable as your grill was down. But he offered me an extra stick of shish to which I agreed. I'm grateful that you took my order so late. However, I was not that impressed by the large special kebab that I ordered. I have been buying your food for long enough & this item kebab was not as good as those I've had in the past. The chicken shish was OK but it didn't have enough chicken or lamb doner. Also, the lamb shish was a bit hard & chewy, not soft & tender as it should be. Also, I asked for extra chilli sauce on it but there wasn't that much. I asked for a bit of garlic sauce but there was hardly any. I have been having your food for a few years now but was not impressed by this order. It felt more like a medium dish than a large. On top of that, even though I agreed to make the minimum order, which I almost did (£14.60), I was charged £1 for delivery. You could have just told me to order something else to take it over the minimum. Furthermore, I went into your newly refurbished Colindale takeaway branch recently, late night as it was closing. A quite big youngish man said they had only lamb doner left. When I asked how much it was for a large he said: "I'll do it for you for £7" but when I looked at the price board above it said £6.50! Then I walked out as it felt like the guy was trying to overcharge me & take advantage of a good long term customer! What is going on you guys? If the service continues to be like this (careless & substandard) then I'll take my custom elsewhere as I regularly order Kebabs from Harrow & all over the NW London area.

*Edit - I appreciate your below response. With all due respect, your equipment maintenance should not really be my concern. The legal issues with the other smaller Alkis in Colindale (opposite Ford car showroom) I understand, so will deal with them separately. I also sent you an e-mail through your website contact form but had no reply. Regarding the delivery charge you should make it clear at the time of order that there's a £1 delivery charge even with a £15 minimum order. However, I feel there should be no charge if customer places minimum order. Less than that, it's understandable. Anyway, how are you going to compensate me for the overall below standard experience? If you can't then I probably won't be ordering again in future. Thanks...

The service was bad right from the start. We arrived just after 7:00 PM and asked for a table for 3. The restaurant was fairly busy and well-staffed however we waited almost 5 minutes before even receiving a menu to read. The food was OK but my main gripe is with one of the young, female, white waiting staff who half way through our meal and without any prompting from us whatsoever, asked me if we wanted some extra bread, i.e., I assumed the complementary bread which they served at the beginning of the meal before the main food arrived. I naturally said yes and expected the bread to arrive. I also requested some extra sauces since the food I ordered was fairly dry. So we carried on eating and the minutes ticked away but NO complementary bread OR even the extra sauce I requested arrived. I called the same waiter over and politely reminded her about her promise to serve the complementary bread to us. She behaved totally bemused as if she had no idea what I was talking about but said she will ask about the complementary bread however this waiter did not come back to us to follow-up on this and in the end we never did get the complementary bread we were promised nor the extra sauces either! I would definitely not be dining here again. The restaurant has CCTV cameras so I am sure if the management would like to watch any footage, it will corroborate with my version of events as explained above as well as the behaviour of this member of staff and perhaps there is audio and/or they can lip read what she said. We came here to relax for a long bank holiday weekend. If there was an issue with perhaps the management not serving complementary bread more than once and this waiter was not aware of this fact, this is not an issue at all as we are all human and can make mistakes however to then not has the transparency and just explain that to us, really frustrated me further! It is not as though I we came into the restaurant with a begging bowl asking for some free food... we are PAYING customers and isn't the saying the customer is always right!

This is a genuine review and we paid by credit card VISA * * ** 3620 EXP 01/25 CONTACTLESS No CVM Used 20:14:05 26/05/24 £47.10 RECEIPT 7348

We won't be...

Their service ruins it all. Barely provided the minimum and they are not like any other turkish restaurants. We came for dinner, ordered starter which didn’t come. We mentioned it when the main came, then they made it…For main we ordered mixed platter, we wanted to change the ribs for chops, they said NOT POSSIBLE. We even offered to pay extra, just change it. Ok, we called the manager… We ended up ordering extra 4 chops for £19…Any other turkish restaurant I went it was never a problem or mixed platter came with cops and there was nothing to change. Food was ok, can’t complain about that. We ordered chai and kunefe, the girl with black/blonde hair didn’t even ask the kitchen for the dessert, it never came. We asked the food for takeaway as we had a lot left. They wouldn’t pack the food for you..You scoop the food for yourself and if you make a mess they don’t even clean the table for you before your tea arrives. They never checked on us, we had to call them always to the table. Plus waiting time for taking our order was way too long. They weren’t even understaffed. I know it, I worked 12 years in this industry. They were struggling to interact with us. Even tho we live nearby, I personally won’t come back, luckily the other turkish restaurants I am going normally gives excellent service even...