Carmel Queen's Park — Restaurant in London

I really wouldn't recommend this place. Booked here for a brunch, after reading so many positive reviews I was super keen to try. We were shown to our table but it was very wonky and I was squashed into the corner of the patio door frame. We requested to move which wasn't a problem. The food was nice but there wasn't a lot of meat options on the menu it was quite veggie based. Would be nice if they included more meat dishes. I went for the Shakshuka. It was nicely presented but the mint was overpowering. My friend had the tea salmon dish which was very small for the price. (Only 1 slice of salmon 2 chopped up boiled eggs and 1 slice of bread. Definitely needed more to bulk it out)

The service however ruined the experience for us. We kept having to prompt the waitress to come over and take our food/drinks order. I was given tea with no milk and had to ask for this. Had to ask for tap water when it should have been provided on arrival. Everything we asked for felt like too much trouble. The waitress messed up my lemonade order and forgotten to put it though on the system. She blamed the kitchen staff for this which was odd to me because the kitchen staff weren't making the drinks.

When we asked for the bill, our waitress placed a QR code on the table and walked off with no explanation as to what to do. This felt odd and impersonal as we were expected to pay for our food through an app that the QR code directed us to. That was the final straw for us. I explained to the waitress that we would not be paying the 12.5 per cent service charge as we had a horrible experience with the service where we had to prompt everything, we were met with excuses and we now had to pay and mess around with the phone app to pay. What were we even paying a service charge for when we were having to do this work ourselves? Once we said this to the waitress, another waitress came to our table rather abruptly and asked for our feedback. This felt very passive aggressive. I explained the poor service we experienced. The waitress agreed to knock off the service charge and went to get our paper copy of the receipt. We did explain we should have had this option to begin with. At this point, we finally paid and we were enjoying the rest of our drinks when another waitress came over to say that they needed our table in 10 minutes. She rolled her eyes at us and muttered under her breath that it was "good" we knew this.

My friend and I do not often complain but this is unacceptable. If you want brunch with a slice of confrontation this is the place for you . I would recommend trying next door at the Milk Beach restaurant. Lovely food and even better service for a much...

Be prepared: tasty but small dishes, massively overpriced, cramped interior and service mistakes will be made. You will leave hungry or feeling a bit robbed, or both. Enjoyment of the food is crushed by woefully small portions with no accompaniment. £24 mezze came in six tiny condiment bowls, flatbread was not included and was another £14. We weren’t super hungry and intended to share among four people but no chance of that. My ‘main’ was a £20 lamb köfte for three small pieces of meat that came with a small amount of garnish and pomegranate, again no real accompaniment. Asked for tap water, told none available (illegal?) and only filtered water which was in an already open bottle. Staff were nice enough but no explanation of the menu, suggestions, attention or personal touches to warrant the service charge. They also brought a wrong order, we sent it back, then when the bill came it was included. We simply didn’t pay for that item. Interior looks great but it’s communal long table seating on benches that are awkward to get into without bumping into a stranger sat next to you. People also kept hitting my back as they walked behind me because it’s so cramped - good luck getting a wheelchair into or through this place. Somewhat thumping music coming from the kitchen area which continually shifted in tempo and had us thinking, for a moment, there was a private event going on. £40 a head at lunch for a noisy communal experience where you all leave hungry is ridiculous. The five star ratings will be completely alienating to anyone who wants an actual meal, in comfort and with substance. Bit...

Overall I expected quite more for the price you are paying. The interior of the place was amazing! There were hiccups with the staff - e.g. we just ordered a bottle of wine and then it disappeared after 3 minutes of our first pour and we needed to search for it and ask it back. One of the wines I wanted to order was not available and they told me they had two wine lists which was weird. The food looked very good but in terms of the taste was just okay to me even though I am generally a fan of Middle Eastern cuisine. Hummus was good, the flatbread with burrata was great and probably the best dish of the evening. The flatbread with ezme and tomato was good too - if you end up in this place definitely the flatbreads are good option to try. Sabich was underwhelming - just eggs and eggplants in some sauce, and very difficult to share although they position themselves as sharing plates restaurant. Nduja prawns had nice sauce but prawns themselves were pretty standard. Lamb shoulder shawarma was good and tender but no special flavour or anything. The slow grilled chicken was underwhelming too and lacked good amount of sauce or something that would make it special. Beef carpaccio was fine. Spicy merguez itself was fine but the portion of the merguez itself was tiny. The veggies that accompanied the merguez were presented as grilled but in fact were barely roasted and the tomato tasted almost as boiled. Overall among the Middle Eastern places I’ve been to in London, this one felt pretty underwhelming in terms of the food although it’s very nicely decorated. I’d probably...