Aya Lebanese Cuisine Sutton — Restaurant in London

February is one of my favourite times of the year because it’s my mums birthday and it gives me an excuse to take her out and spend quality time with her.

As such, I booked a table at Aya through the website to take my mum and the whole family of seven out to celebrate her 60th birthday.

Despite my online enquiry seven days prior to the booking date, I never received any confirmation of the booking and so I emailed the restaurant to clarify.

I soon received a response from Aya confirming the booking. No problem. Come Friday 14th, the day of my mother’s birthday, I received a phone call from the manager asking to confirm if we were attending that evening, for which I did. Again, no problem.

On arrival to the restaurant we found that there was a special Valentines weekend set menu, for £23/person including a number of limited starters, main and dessert. My mother suffers from medical conditions and has specific dietary requirements, which was not a problem as we had done prior due diligence on the Aya menu online.

So when we discussed the restricted menu with the manager, and conveyed our frustration with the options, I was really disappointed at the lack of flexibility in the restaurant in acccomodating our needs or being able to present a pragmatic solution to us.

All we simply wanted was a single main and a healthy starter per person (which was not on the set menu). The only option was for each person to commit to 5 bland and unhealthy starters, a main and a dessert at £23 per person for people with dietary restrictions was incredibly frustrating.

Adding to this frustration is the fact that Aya had three touchpoints with myself (website booking, reservation confirmation and phone call confirmation) where they could and should have informed me of the restricted menu for the date of the booking.

We discussed our options as a family but didn’t feel like we had any options but to leave, and go home hungry.

I want the management to understand that they have unequivocally failed on every element of restaurant services and customer experience and for that I leave this 1 star review. I suspect the food here is good, but the business processes, management and capability of the organisation in customer service is amongst the worst I’ve ever experienced.

I hope I can make this up to my...

Being vegan my partner and I, both have to make sure all the ingredients are within our lifestyle. We called multiple times to know ingredients and was clearly told what was in the dishes by the lady over the phone ♡ We were SO surprised to see how many dishes were vegan !

Every dish made the mezze at home perfect! We even got extra bread from the store which was the sweetest thing ♡ really made my day :")

I thought I got the wrong Hummous but I was mistaken ! The lady over the phone explained she checked it personally and it was reassuring knowing they double check orders since im so used to getting wrong orders on the delivery app.

Now onto the vegan food!

Falafle wrap: very dry, loved the pickles in it but had to add the hommous, tabbouleh, and baba ghanouj

Baba ghanouj: I've only had this once from tesco and hated it BUT THIS CHANGES MY MIND ! it was gorgeous 😍

Borghol banadora & Saffron rice: 100% comfort food

Chips: Very dry but I love dipping them into the hommous and baba ghanouj

Falafle: SO AROMATIC you can see whole spices in them which explode in your mouth when you bite into it. Very crispy and addictive. SADLY we didn't receive the tahini that came with the falafle :( we didn't want to complain so just left it as that since the rest of the food was delicious 😋

Hummous beiruty: the best hommous I've ever had. Love the slight spice 😍

Tabbouleh: Sincerely my fav thing and i wish this was put into the falafle wrap so i added it myself and it is the BEST xD

I truly think that this a great place in sutton for a nice selection of food to...

First of all the man who is supposed to be in charge in the evening is a rude man who is most of the time outside the restaurant talking to his friends than taking care of what is going on inside the restaurant. Menu did not have any drink section and when we asked for drinks he said it verbally and fast. And also he wants you to get the £25 per person menu card and mind you drinks in not included in this. When we told him we will get from the normal menu he told us we have to order each one a starter and a main. And when we told him not everyone want a starter he refused to take our order and said we are blocking a table and making him loose money. Man the restaurant was not that busy as he was trying to show. We stayed there for a few hours and saw that his clients were mostly take away and not actually sitting in the restaurant to eat. So anyway we were forced to get a starter and main. Food came quickly but after waiting for 2 hours we didn't enjoyed it. Also they need a few table manners, they started removing the plates while some were still eating. Wanted to order dessert but again not on the menu so end up leaving. By the way we paid for 2 hummus when we had only one and paid for some bread which we never ordered. And they have a 10% service charge. Never going to go there again while that man with a big belly is there. If you want to run a successful business treat your customers like family and not...