Huffkins — Restaurant in London

We, my wife and I are seniors citizens and we love the John Lewis kingston restaurant for the wonderful, friendly, honest service and the fantastic clean food, too.

We have been going there for countless years and it has become a habit to visit a few times in the week.

Today, we went to the knitting and wool shop to buy some wool, as it took some time we decided to visit the restaurant next door.

We saw on the white board that if we down loaded the Hufffkins app. we would be eligible for a complimentary coffee.

We did on one mob. Phone but the second mob. Phone was taking some time.

The tall English assistant tried to help and said he would get the coffee ready, as the mob.phone of the wife Was taking some time to finish its downloading.

Two lovely hot coffees were ready and served with a smile by the young lady and the tall assistant.

We thanked them both, and asked if we could now go. The young lady said yes, with a lovely smile and we were on our way out, enjoying the beautifully made hot coffees.

As we were just about going out of the exit from the restuarent, a younger, shorter tubby man very rudely asked us to come back, to show him our apps.

We, followed him in. He went behind the counter, I showed him my app. He registered the sp. My wife's app was still circling and came back as not installed.

My, wife tried again to download the Huffkins app. By now we were surrounded by a few more customers and a lady in green wheel chair who were waiting to either pay their bills or wanting to by pass from the rear of us to the exit.

We, felt so ashamed, angry and truly disgusted at the service we were receiving from this member of staff. We felt like criminals and he seemed to be enjoying the scene as other customers could hear and were looking at us.

I, explained that we did not run away but did get the clearance from a member of the staff after the coffee was served by the smiling tall man and the young lady who brought in the second coffee for my wife.

But no, he would not have any explanation and just turned a deaf ear, explaining that we could pay for the second coffee, get another one the next time we happen to come in.

We, did not mind paying at all, but the manner of addressing a customer was totally incorrect, rude, aggressive, totally not the right approach.

He, literally dragged us in, as if he was a policeman catching runaway criminals, his aggressive manner of speaking to elderly non White citizens, whose only fault was a slow app. That took longer than neccessary to download, and we were being accused of non paying for a coffee.

We,left disgusted, angry and sad at the treatment we had just suffered and experienced at the hands of a very ignorant, idiot member of the kingston Huffkins who should not have been serving the public in the front line.

This, member of the staff needs to retrained and should take a page from the service chart of the others, who were wonderful in their customer service and how to approach senior citizens and ordinary customers, too.

My, wife and I will be coming again as usual to the main John Lewis restaurant, but will not be recommending this restaurant or visiting this eating place where there is a total lack of respect and a disgusting service from a member of the staff.

We, are not happy at writing the above, but sad the way your member of staff behaved...

We came in as we had a buy one get one free Cream tea voucher through the John Lewis card app. After we'd ordered and sat down it took about 15 minutes for our tea to be brought over which we thought was a while but as it was a Sunday afternoon and reasonably busy we could understand it. We assumed the scones would follow right after, but they didn't, in fact we waited another 15/20 minutes and nothing came. Our table was right next to the counter so we could see plenty of drinks/cakes/meals being put on trays and taken to other tables. We asked one of the servers if we could have the rest of our order as it hadn't all come, she said yes (with no apology offered) and checked our table number before going back behind the counter. But once again nothing came and after another 10 minutes we'd had enough and had to leave as we needed to be elsewhere. We went and asked if we could have a refund as it was ridiculous that we'd waited for over 45 minutes for a cake to be put on a plate. The lady at the till was the one who had both taken our order and been the one we asked where our food was when passing, but still she looked put out by us being angry! She went and got someone else, I'm guessing her manager, who then told us we couldn't have a refund as we'd used a voucher and our order contained a free item. Why this meant we couldn't get a refund I don't know, we weren't asking for the money back for two items, just the one we paid for. She said the best they could do was give us the items to go, and within less then a minute they had been boxed up. Amazing that it could be done so quickly considering how long we had initially waited!

I cannot say whether or not the actual cakes were any good because we had somewhere else to go that afternoon so they had to be left in a warm car for several hours and by the time we got home the pots of cream had to be thrown away and they scones...

We ordered two of the celebration afternoon teas and one regular afternoon tea. The tea selection was very good and I very much enjoyed the "girlie grey". The waitress ran through what we would be given - as well as sandwiches and scones, we would be given an eclair, coffee and walnut muffin, lemon cake.

When the food arrived we were disappointed - there were four finger sandwiches for each of us, only two scones, one chocolate eclair, one coffee and walnut muffin and two very thin slices of lemon cake - we had been expecting small versions of each of the cakes so that we could all have a try of everything.

When I questioned the waitress about the portion she became quite defensive said that they had topped up the celebration tea for two with more sandwiches and cakes for a third person. The waitress brought a third scone, but when I asked about the cakes she said "this is why I asked if you were happy with the selection I read out to you". I responded that we had thought we were getting smaller versions of each. She then asked me what else we would like. I asked if she could tell us what the selection was. She said "well they are all over there" pointing to a counter, but they were also on the menu so could we please choose quickly as the cafe was quite busy (it was a Friday afternoon and not busy). We then asked for the peanut butter and chocolate brownie.

So, on to the food itself. The sandwiches were tasty but there was not enough, the scones were delicious, the chocolate eclair was very hard (not the soft choux pastry I had expected) and the rest of the cakes were mediocre.

Having been situated in John Lewis, we had expected a far superior experience. Unfortunately, apart from the tea and the scones, we were disappointed by both the food and...