Cafe Helen — Restaurant in London

Worst experience I’ve had in London Singelhandedly the absolute worst food and service I’ve had in my entire life. I was so excited to show my friend Arabic food and came to this restaurant for a shawarma. We got served and the chicken was raw. my friend who’s allergic to wasps found a WASP in his food. We told the waiter, he laughed it off and brought us another shawarma that was clearly pre made and soggy. I was in absolute shock. We told them we were done and the waiter asked we need anything else and told us “thanks, goodbye.” We took that as a goodbye, and exited the restaurant as we gathered they were embarrassed about the wasp in our food. We felt so sick walking down the street and 20 minutes later, a man approaches and really rudely says we didn’t pay. We explain that we found a wasp in our food and were told goodbye, he was really rude acting as if we were in the wrong for the wasp in our food and told us we should’ve told him as he was the manager. We told him we’d told the waiter and it wasn’t our job to tell him. It was a miscommunication between the staff. He was really rude the way he was speaking and not only did we find a wasp in our food, we were being disrespected as well. He kept saying to walk back to the restaurant and pay and we said no. He then called over 6 street police which he clearly knew and had a good relationship with. We had no choice but to walk back. One of the street police was quite pleasant but it was clear at that point we had no choice but to waste another 20 minutes of our lives having this terrible experience and walking back to the restaurant still feeling sick. They told us to point at the waiter, which denied that he’d told us goodbye and we should’ve asked for the bill. We then had to pay and while we were doing so, they spoke in Arabic (not knowing I understand Arabic) saying remarks such as “It’s just a fly! It’s just an insect.” I told them that they were being incredibly rude and unbelievable and that if inspection came and found a wasp in their food they’d shut down. They clearly didn’t care and just wanted money. Absolutely horrendous and I am so disappointed my friend had to go through that experience trying his first ever shawarma. Absolutely horrendous!! Never go there it will ruin your day and your appetite and hopefully inspection checks how they make and what they put in their food because it is genuinely worrying. I’m not the type of person to leave a negative review or complain but this goes way beyond any realm of...

CAFE HELEN? MORE LIKE CAFE SCAM

Me and my friends went to Cafe Helen for a quick dinner. Immediately, the owner shoved us into a corner in the restaurant. There was not enough space for 2 people let alone 7 of us. We asked the manager if we could sit outside however we were quickly dismissed until we ordered shisha.

Why launch a restaurant if you do not even have space to accommodate guests. The floor was filthy - so grimy that it could work as a part time ice rink.

Anyways, the waiter came and took our orders and was extremely disappointed in us when he heard we only wanted to eat shawarmas. He then threatens us and says if we just wanted to order shawarmas - we should leave the restaurant, go to the takeaway area and the rest is our problem. He then proceeds to aggressively upsell us fries - we are all teenagers by the way and were extremely afraid that if we do not say "yes" he would kick us out the restaurant.

The food finally came. For £9 we ordered a "small shawarma". Realistically, it should be £5 for the 10 bite wrap with barely any filling. My friend ordered a "large shawarma" for approx £13 which was 99% bread and 1% meat. Another one of us ordered a falafel wrap for £8.50. Again, extremely small size and cold.

We asked for tap water to wash down this mess. And we were told "Sorry no tap water". As we are polite, we did not argue there but I should mention that "All licensed premises in England and Wales are required by law to provide “free potable water” to their customers upon request.". We also asked for napkins and received kitchen roll.

Finally, as if we were not exploited enough, the waiter decided to add his "own" service charge and suddenly the bill of £11 per person became £12.

It is evident that they saw us as teenagers and took advantage of our innocence and generosity.

Do yourself a favour and avoid this extremely overrated restaurant. I do not know who rated their shawarma so highly but it was pretty awful. There are many other places on Edgware road that are 10 times better than this place and service is miles better.

I know the restaurant will not bother to sort this out with me after the pretty...

We weren’t greeted or welcomed when we arrived i asked for a table and the waiter asked if we wanted to sit indoors or outdoors since it was a hot summer day i requested outdoor seating he then asked if we were planning to order shisha i said no and he replied that outdoor seating was supposed to be for shisha customers and if someone wanted shisha we’d have to move i understood and respected that policy but there were more than 8 free outdoor seats and realistically not many people smoke shisha during the afternoon it is usually an evening thing we sat down and I told the waiter i was ready to order he interrupted me rudely before I could even finish speaking assuming i was going to talk about the seating he told us again that we’d have to leave if someone wanted to smoke shisha my friend and i looked at each other in disbelief i was just trying to order food not argue about the seating i clarified that I wasn’t talking about the seating at all only that we were ready to order he awkwardly smiled realising he had just argued for no reason because he didn't actually listen and was ready to just pounce into an argument he then walked away to chat with another staff member for about five minutes right next to us eventually he came back and asked Are you ready to order i told him again that’s what we’d said when we first sat down so we place our order but then he says we need to order at least two starters to be allowed to sit outside otherwise we could get the food as takeaway and eat somewhere else it was honestly shocking customer service basically telling us to leave at that point i told my friend we were leaving as we walked out we passed those same empty outdoor tables and one of them had a customer eating food without any starters just a main plate which is exactly what we had ordered and they were sitting by themselves no shisha and nobody else with them getting food to be able to say that they had two starters this is the restaurant side of the place and the waiter was a indian guy incase the managers...