Anya Cafe — Restaurant in London

Totally disappointed by booking system when attempting to book for my birthday.

I called the phone number on the Anya Cafe bookings form, but was abruptly told by the operator that I had the wrong number and had come through to the shop. The last digit is wrong on the website for Anya Cafe and should end in 4 (not 9).

Fundamentally, booking requires a credit card charged for the full amount of £35 per tea at the time of booking. Cancellation policy is totally unclear - all that i could tell from the website is that cancellations from 48 hours before the event are subject to the full cost of tea. What about cancelling before 48 hours?

Most patisseries do not hold this policy. Generally there is no charge when booking and they will allow cancellation with no penalties 24 hours in advance or even on the day!!

Initially, I received an enquiry email from Anya Cafe to see if I wanted to progress my booking. Having responded with the above query about how cancellation policy works, I subsequently received an email to say my booking was cancelled. I followed up again about the cancellation policy but there was no reply.

Anya Cafe has a heavy handed approach to bookings and lacks any sense of reality in expecting customers to pay £35 per person payments at the point of booking. Even worse is the expectation of charging the full amount if customer circumstances change 2 days before the sitting and possibly even a partial amount if it is before (but who knows as policy is...

I was so so excited to come to the Anya Village and experience the joy of one of my favourite brands. Paid a visit to the stores and the service was impeccable however the cafe? A serious let down. The lady with the red hair was incredibly rude to the people in front of us and then borderline refused to allow us to use a table that needed to be free in 45 minutes despite highlighting the fact we only wanted coffee and a cake she acted as though we had the desire for a three course meal (however she changed her mind after making us wait outside for ten minutes). My partner then went to use the toilet just before leaving however the member of staff downstairs was incredibly standoffish and abruptly told him to wait upstairs. We asked for the bill and it was met with a card reader slammed on the table and the member of staff walked off and left and didn't bother to return despite us waiting for five minutes to see if she'd come back to collect the card reader and checked we'd paid? The reason being because she was far too busy having a conversation to even say thank you or check the payment has been taken. When leaving the same red haired lady couldn't even pop a smile. Really, really wouldn't suggest visiting the café unless you want service staler than the air downstairs.

The cake and coffee were great so there's...

Nice food, rude staff, poor service.

We came in and were greeted by nice staff, and the service seemed fine at first. The manager who took our order was confident and memorised it without writing anything down, which seemed impressive initially.

However, there were two mistakes with our order: • We specifically ordered an oat hot chocolate but was given an oat cappuccino, which was a big issue as one of us is very sensitive to caffeine. • We also ordered a chocolate monster cake but were served a vanilla one. When we pointed it out, they dismissed it, saying it was “too late” to change, even though we made our order very clearly.

What’s troubling is that these mistakes felt more than just careless. We spoke softly but clearly, so was this because we weren’t understood—or something worse? It’s hard not to feel there was a discriminatory / racist element at play. To make things worse, we overheard the manager and barista gossiping about how “this is why they hate something.” Was that about us? It certainly felt that way.

This was particularly upsetting because we’ve liked this brand in the past, and this was only our second visit. Unfortunately, this experience has left us feeling unwelcome and hesitant to return. It’s incredibly disappointing to feel that we were treated differently, possibly because...