FKABAM RESTAURANT — Restaurant in London

I had such high expectations of Black Axe Mangal having been aware of them for a number of years but unfortunately I was incredibly disappointed. After an hour, we had only received two small starters, one of them being the beef short ribs which were not only chewy but cold as well. In all fairness, the main (pork belly) and dessert (mousse) were nice but the three starters beforehand had already set the tone for the evening. It's a cool atmosphere in there and the staff are really welcoming, however, it is incredibly cramped and you are practically touching shoulders with the people next to you. In order to get out of your seat you literally have to push the table into the middle of the restaurant. I don't mind close and intimate spaces but this just felt like they were trying to cram in as many tables as possible to maximise profit. Not to mention the music is so incredibly loud that you have to shout to speak to the person in front of you. The portions are tiny and charging £45/head for the set menu is completely unjustified. Our total bill came to £112 roughly - which included the standard £45/head charge as well as service charge and three tiny ginger ales priced at £3.50 each - extortionate considering the experience we had. After an hour and a half we had finally finished our food which in my opinion is far too long. To make matters worse, we were still so hungry after finishing all our food, that we had to get a McDonald's on our way home (I wish I was joking when I said that). I'm sure this place was great back in the day judging from past reviews (I've also followed them for many years), but it seems like they've gone downhill since the pandemic and are milking customers in...

Extremely haughty and apathetic service staff here, who are extremely slow and inefficient yet tried to make it seem that it was the patrons that were holding up the wait of the next table. The more I think about it, the more I feel that maybe they were racist to my table of East Asians.

Anyway, the tables are insanely close together, the service honestly is just horridly bad. We had to serve our own wine, cut our own food, and at the end they tried to chase us out as if we owed them time and money as if we were in a Parisian establishment.

After the staff tried to tell the new table that it was kind of the fault of our table as to why they were seated late, I then told them that we were sat down 25 mins late in the first place. Then they tried to confront us as if we slandered them. What is this travesty. And at the end of the day this place is extremely expensive and while the food is fantastic all the staff need to be fired. I am sorry to be so direct but they were so holier than thou. Telling us that we should have “expected” this level of service - that it was written on the website that each seating is only 1.5 hours - really, for a five course menu that took forever to come out? Each time they forgot to serve us water too when we asked umpteen times. Or the wine menu. Or anything we wanted really. A meal here is more than a 100£ per person by the way. Yet the music is sooo loud and the tables are literally side by side the table neighbour gave us a death stare as if it was our fault that they couldn’t squeeze in - as if the restaurant only accepted size 0 models. Maybe that’s their...

Our much anticipated visit to Black Mangal was a huge disappointment. After reading other recent reviews, I still remained optimistically cautious but was thoroughly disappointed. The seating is unworthy of the price tag, cheap orange plastic chairs from a school canteen and narrow benches only fit for kids, the poor 6 ft plus but next to us looked more uncomfortable than I felt.

The food was small, overpriced, over engineered, lacked substance and flavour. I'd hoped the prawn toast to be of epic Duck Duck Goose proportions after being told it was one of the best dishes on the menu but Sichuan House down the road is better priced and more delicious.

The bone marrow bread of £15 was half a flat bread, a tablespoon of picked salad with tomatoes which was nice and 1 bone split in half, tremendously over priced. We had high hopes for the Onglet steak, at £23.50. However, although the steak was delicious, the matchstick fries could've been poured from a crisp packet and the lashings of green salsa on the side was full of so much chilli that my stomach cramped all night (and I'm Asian!)

The menu is more focused on drinks (4 pages of it Vs 1 page of food)

It will continue to attract hipsters and remain full but we left hungry, out of pocket of £54 for 1 soda, prawn toast, bone marrow bread and Onglet steak with 12.5% service automatically added to the bill)

Staff were pleasant, but if you want real Turkish food and not to feel hungry after £54, I'd suggest Gem or Pasha down the road on...