Cabana at The O2 — Restaurant in London

Food was lovely and bought out very quickly but the whole experience was tainted by awful service.

To start with, we were told by the doorman to go upstairs for our booking and the “lovely” waitress there would see us to our seats. After going upstairs the two waitresses were in an argument with a couple of diners and rudely turned to us and said “sit where you want”. No hello or warm welcome to start our visit on a pleasant note. Then when it came to order drinks the waitress was extremely rude and made no effort to make any sort of conversation, this made us feel very awkward. I asked if the burgers came with anything or if we needed to order sides separately as this wasn’t clear on the menu and the waitress was very cold with her response so I ordered a hot plate instead.

The food arrived very quickly after that and it was delicious. However, no check back was done and the water for the table I had requested had been forgotten. The restaurant was not busy and yet it took 15 minutes for the waitress to clear our plates and no desserts or extra drinks were offered. The table next to us had to wait so long for someone to notice them and take their order that they turned to us and asked how they were meant to order their food.

After reminding the waitress of our water and requesting the 12.5% service charge be taken off our bill, there were no apologies and at no point throughout did the waitress attempt to ask us how our visit was. Then on departing, non of the floor staff said goodbye to us despite them all standing around- this is such a basic step of service that could at least have ended our visit on a good-ish note.

The floor staff completely let the kitchen down as the food was really lovely but the service made us feel awkward and uncomfortable throughout the evening. Safe to say next time I need an eatery before an event at the o2…. I will be choosing elsewhere which is...

Dinner and drinks for two

Our server was neutral. I humoured her and gave her polite conversation to help encourage her skills, which she did respond favourably! Unfortunately that was the end of her service! We did not see her until we asked for the bill, after waiting an age for our table to be cleared. No prompt to ask if we would like dessert!

The cocktail selection was disappointing! A lot of pineapple in the choices. I do not wish to have a negroni containing PINEAPPLE as one of the ingredients! That is not a negroni! Campari isn't even served there!

We did not wait long for our food and the presentation was nice. I had my sirloin medium, and my friend had well done, which we both found chewy. (I had to remove the chokey bits to hide in my napkin) The steak came with side sauces and two corn ribs, which seemed like they were cooked and reheated more than once, so a bit disappointing. The sides of rice and black bean were lovely, but I'm not a fan of the carrots in the black beans.

Our table was in an awkward location, with another server asking to excuse, passed several times to get to his diners

I would have asked for the service to be taken off the bill, but I wasn't paying as a friend took me out for my birthday.

We chose Cabana because we wanted to try something new instead of the usual suspects! If I had read the reviews beforehand I would've passed and gone somewhere else. I noticed that the replies are selective, mainly answering the good reviews and apologising to a few of the bad. "Hope it will be better next time"!! IF MY EXPERIENCE WAS SO BAD, THAT I HAD TO WRITE A REVIEW......I WOULD NEVER BE COMING BACK!!!! The servers seem to be rude as a standard! They don't care about our reviews because the foot fall is very high, and who reads reviews when hungry and spontaneously passing by choosing an establishment to...

We were really looking forward to eating here before our concert and boy, were we disappointed! I am astonished at the postive food reviews because the food was AWFUL! You would not think that from looking at the photos of the food! We ordered the black cod, and the vegetarian bean and mushroom hot pot. The black cod was hard and like rubber. It had clearly been overcooked but when we spoke to the manager, he said that is how it is because it is marinated...my husband has had spiced fish before but never has he struggled to cut into it before. The taco it was sitting on was so crisp and hard that it was impossible to cut a piece of it off...it would just break up into small pieces and as for the pieces of corn on the plate, don't even ask! My vegetarian dish was average...smoky barbecue flavour but that was it...so one dimensional and the accompanying rice was so bland. The only nice item was the fries with spices and feta...that was it. The manager did offer to replace the cod but we declined as it would have meant just sitting and waiting with one dish already served and another on the way. In the entire time we were there, our waitress did not ask us if our food was ok nor whether we needed anything else...for that reason, we didn't pay the 12.5% service charge. It's not a given because it is added to the bill automatically...that's unfortunately not how it works. The manager was nice enough to agree to take the cod off the bill after I informed him I was unhappy to pay for it...after all, most of it was still on the plate. A really disappointing experience and one we will not make the mistake...