Hakkaland — Restaurant in London

Ok, I'll admit it. I also read about all the awards and the self-claimed reputation they think so highly of. Picked up the phone and booked a table. A polite gentleman answers me and books me in at 8.30. Sounds all good and basic right? Unfortunately this was the peak of my experience. You know that part in the Lion King where Mufasa falls from the cliff? Mufasa is my experience.

Arrived at 8.30, a family of 6 between two cars. I paid £4 per car to park for 2 hours, because it's such a wonderful restaurant and I'm about to have a whale of a time. It's my mother's birthday so naturally I'm in a great mood. On arrival, I stood by the door with the other 5 people in my party and...well that's it for now. We just stood there, for about 10 minutes. Ever wondered what it would be like to actually wear the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone? This was it! All the staff were just walking around and looking everywhere but doing everything to ensure they didn't make any sort of eye-contact. Was the restaurant busy? Yes, yes it was. But all I am really looking for was a greeting or acknowledgement of some sort so I know the wheels are in motion to get us seated at earliest possibility. Anyway, nothing of the sort actually happened - I walk through the restaurant and catch the eye of the girl behind the bar. I let her know we're waiting at the front for about 10 minutes but no-ones acknowledged us and she responds "yeah cause it's busy"... (if you are wondering how she said this to me, think Vicky Pollard from Little Britain, she shared the same demeanour). "Yes" I replied, "I can see that and I totally understand, I'm just saying nobody has greeted us so we're feeling invisible, nobody is trying to look at us. I know you're working the bar and not the floor, however as I caught your eye and saw you look at me, I am telling you". Cue the next 2 minutes where this bar girl is telling me over and over again "I wasn't looking at you actually I was making a drink, I wasn't looking at you, I wasn't looking at you"... I mean it was basically like an episode of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares. The bar girl is making the sarcastic facial expression that I am crazy to even think she has looked at me, and going on over and over denying she has looked at me.

Anyway, another waitress comes to the rescue, gives her the hand signal to stop talking (not that it really worked) and gives me the sweet talk "Sir, can I help you, sorry about her, please let me sort this out" (whilst this new waitress attempts to make amends, Vicky at the bar continues to breathe some rubbish under her breath about how she wasn't looking at me). I explain to the new waitress, she tells me to wait by the door, she's going to clean a table for me and seat me. This takes circa another 10 minutes. During this time, the bar girl leaves the bar and goes to greet other customers who are waiting, but ensures to maintain no eye-contact with me (lol). Now I am seated, I give thanks to the waitress and she's off to tend to other tables.

The time is now 9pm. Then I start to wonder, is their food really that good? Is the food so good that you can sacrifice any type of customer service and 30-40 minutes of your time to enjoy this food they are cooking? Then I realised.... everybody has paid £4 a car to park! So naturally they're giving it their best shot before leaving to go elsewhere! Another 10 minutes go by, we grab our own menus as it doesn't look like they will arrive any time soon. Another 5 minutes looking at the menu but unfortunately no-one has stopped to offer drinks or at the least water, I pull out my phone, search for another restaurant, book and leave to enjoy my evening elsewhere. Despite losing £8 to the parking meter, I can confirm I left with my sanity fully intact. Now it brings me the question, have I ever been to a restaurant, spent 40 minutes there and left without dining? What an absolutely shocking...

So we were recommended this place by someone and I was initially hesitant to visit after all the recent negative reviews about the service. I am here to confirm that the service did indeed leave a lot to be desired but the food was absolutely banging and in our eyes, more than made up for the incredibly slow service.

Service: We were seated pretty quickly and given menus but waited too long to order - no one approached us and we had to grab the attention of the waiter

It then took a really long time for our starters to arrive and only one came. The other came around 30-45 mins later with the mains which we also had to ask several times for.

They got confused with our order and brought a dish we didn’t order and didn’t bring the actual dish we ordered (some noodle dish) but we were actually glad about this in the end as we would have had too much food

In total we spent around 2 hours in the restaurant from the time we arrived to the time we left.

The waiters were kind and good natured but there are some real issues with the slow. service and organisation at this restaurant - so much so that we saw at least 2 tables leave the restaurant before the food came out of frustration. The positive recommendation we were given is what kept us seated.

Food: The food was incredible and it was just so odd and kind of funny to us to experience such slow and disorganised service but amazing food. We were really glad we stayed put.

The chicken lollipops are a must if you visit as they were just delicious. I forgot the name of the other starter but it was a fried fish dish which was also delicious and tasted soo fresh.

The kolkata rice was also amazing and it was recommended to us by the waiter. We also went for a chicken gravy and prawn teppenkaki which came piping hot and tasted really fresh. I personally didn’t enjoy the chicken gravy as much as the other dishes.

The chefs here are amazing and the food is awesome. I hope more staff can be employed and the service improves because the food being cooked up by the chefs deserves it. We visited on a Friday so if you can, it might be a better experience in terms of service to visit on a weekday when it is less busy. If you do experience really slow service then try to stick around for the great food which made our visit worthwhile in the end.

We will definitely be...

I had the most torrid experience for a dinner outing in ages .

For one,when we arrived ,noone attended our table for over 15 to 20 mins . They didn't even acknowledge us nor bother giving us menus . The manager randomly clocked that our table was empty and we overheard them asking if whoever sat us down even bothered giving us menus. Luckily we had already checked online what we'd like.

The waiter,after 40 mins of ordering and waiting , comes to us and tells us the food will be delayed , mind you the restaurant is less than half full at this stage so you wonder. When we asked him how long , he said he'd check and let us know . Next 15 mins we saw him wandering around and never give us any answer . The food came 25 mins after . Pathetic.

When we ordered the food , we ordered what we usually do the chicken manchurian and the hakka noodles etc. But the taste was so bad I had to request the manager to come and taste the food herself and see if she could enjoy it. She was nice enough to take the manchurian off the menus for us but to be honest everything was bad . The rice and the teppenyaki was super oily and had a smell to it and the hakka noodles and manchurian was down right tasteless and watered down . The only thing that was ok was the chilli mushrooms we ordered for starters.

The service was pathetic , the food was tasteless and the ambience was even worse . They had 3 different music and visual settings . 2 TVs playing random shows from YouTube and cooking and in the background we had extremely loud reggae music playing , so loud I had to request the waitress to turn it down . Even then it annoyingly played random music and ads from YouTube.

At one point we used to celebrate birthdays at this place and loved it for its taste and ambience. I doubt we will ever...