Indulgence — Restaurant in London

I never write reviews but I’m shocked at the service at this place. Let me set the scene:

It’s a Wednesday afternoon and there is basically no one at the restaurant, not busy at all. My sisters who have all taken a day off of work for this order our food. They inform us it will take 20minutes. Cool. The lady at the til proceeds to take our money but doesn’t mention that she’s added a service charge to all of our bills. Bit strange to take a service charge without even informing the customer and before any service has been given so we question it and sit down.

30minutes later I go up to the til to ask the lady how much longer the food will be as they said 20 minutes. She immediately has an attitude huffing puffing rolling her eyes at me and says “MINIMUM 20min”. I’m confused at her random attitude and ask her to just clarify the time. She said it will be ready soon but then proceeds to scold me saying I “shouldn’t be complaining about timining” and that I’m complaining about “small things”. Excuse me? I remind her I’m just questioning the time of the food and that I’ve paid for a service and she goes “what service I’m not providing a service”

Whatever I brush it off and sit down. She comes to the table with drinks and I ask for a tap water which she declined saying they don’t give it (false we’ve been here before and they do) so my sister tries to discuss with her but she cuts her off and she immediately starts screaming at us! In front of the only 2 other people at the restaurant! She shouts: “SHE IS PISSING ME OFF. PLEASE TALK TO SOMEONE ELSE I CANT TALK”. We are all so shocked. Never been shouted or sworn at by cashier/waitress. Genuinely speechless. And she was so angry over what!? Because we asked when the 30min late food would be ready and for some tap water? Seriously!? If you can’t talk to customers then get a different job?

We all get up and say we don’t want to eat here anymore. The mood has been spoilt and it’s uncomfortable. The chef comes out and tries to de-escalate the situation as they said the manager wasn’t available. I appreciate the chefs effort she was respectful and pleasant. It’s a shame because the food was ready and I feel so bad for the chefs wastedtime. But I just can’t spend my money at an establishment which swears at its customers.

The lady at the til (I think her name is Salma or Sarah or Sam or smth like that) is the reason that this entire mess happened. Her attitude is TERRIBLE. Her customer manners are non existent. Even when the chef was trying to de escalate the situation the lady at till was still was making comments saying “Shutup I didn’t swear at you. I told you you were pissing me off because yes you are pissing me off”. Unbelievable she was still swearing. To this day I’m still confused what we even did to “ piss” her off so much where her attitude was so terrible. No customer skills whatsoever. She had an annoyed look on her face the entire time. We all wanted to stay and eat the food because we felt bad for the chef but we just couldn’t because the till lady attitude was AWFUL. All she had to do was be sincerely apologetic.

Thank God the chef lady refunded our money. Even she was getting annoyed at the til lady and could see there was no saving this situation.

So I can’t comment on the food. Would’ve loved to try it. Chef lady is reasonable and not at fault. Thank you for refund. Need to talk to the manager tho because we missed our afternoon booking due to the delay at this restaurant. Til lady has a major attitude problem and thinks it’s acceptable to swear at paying customers. Paid for service which includes a side of being sworn at. Do not come here if you don’t want your mood...

Avoid, avoid, avoid!

I am a big foodie so I am always on the lookout for new restaurants and good places to eat. However, I can honestly say I have never been as shocked as I was after I left this place.

Me and some family members decided to visit indulgence for brunch on a very rare day off. We were told to order at the till which we did and later realised we had been overcharged. We were not given an itemised bill so when we questioned it, we were told that service charge is automatically applied. The waitress/cashier who told us seemed really annoyed when we said we should have been advised and there was nothing on the menu to advise an additional charge. She kept rolling her eyes and responding with attitude and said she will call the manager on the phone and let us know. We left it at that and went to wait for our food.

We were advised that it would take 20 minutes however 35 minutes later, we were still sitting and waiting. One of the girls decided to go to the till and ask how long but returned really shocked saying the waitress/cashier just gave her loads of attitude and said she should stop complaining about every little thing and the food would take minimum 20 minutes. When she said that she was providing a service, the waitress/cashier responded by saying we don’t provide a service to you here (ermmm if you don’t provide a service, why are you charging customers service charges?!) The waitress/cashier went on to say to her that the chef was supposed to go but because of us, the chef had to stay back to make our food and now she had missed her sons school play. To be honest, we were all starving by this point and also had somewhere else to be at 3 so we left it and just continued to try and enjoy our day.

About 5 mins later, the same waitress came to our table to give a tea and frappe. She left it on the table in a huff and with an irritated look about her. One of us asked for tap water and she curtly said they don’t give tap water. When we said it had been given before she said well we don’t now. We asked if there was a problem and why she seemed to be annoyed at us and shockingly she went on to say, I don’t want to talk to you, talk to someone else, you’re pissing me off. We couldn’t believe it. She then walked off in a huff. We decided at that point it had become too awkward for us to stay in the restaurant as other customers in the restaurant had heard what had happened and all looked shocked at the exchange. We asked to speak to a manager and she said wait until 5pm because the manager is busy (it was around 2pm at this point). We informed her we want a refund and no longer want the food which she said we can’t. The chef came out who to her credit tried to calm the situation however the waitress/cashier wouldn’t stop interrupting her and continued her rant that we were ‘pissing’ her off and that by her saying that, she wasn’t swearing at us. At this point even the chef got fed up and yelled something to the waitress/cashier (in their native tongue) and refunded our money. The chef tried to explain that the waitress/cashier was pregnant as if that was an excuse for her to swear and shout at us.

We left this restaurant flabbergasted at the treatment with our whole day ruined as we had now missed our booking. Complete waste of a rare day off and all down to a rude, unprofessional woman who clearly is not handling her job in her current state and therefore taking it out on customers.

I wish I had read all the other reviews about the rude staff before we went. Such a huge regret. Overpriced menu for mediocre food with a side of...

I was hugely displeased and upset with my experience here. Since this place opened i have visited many times, i am a local and come often and even order on Uber. My experience today was absolutely appalling. The staff were so rude to the point we were abused out of the shop, im sure you have cctv so please check. We arrived at 1:25 ordered by 1:30 by 2;05 our food was still not ready, i was told it would be another 10/15 mins. We were told at this point that they had a big order before us and we should understand. Firstly, it is a very basic thing to explain there will be a delay beforehand, secondly to be told its our fault as we are on a lunchbreak and we would usually wait is disgusting. No one should wait 45mins for brunch with no explanation and then to be told we would wait if we didn’t have to go to work. A simple apology for the delay would have sufficed. Now unfortunately this was not the end of it, half our order was now ready and at this point i said i do not want it as the remaining order was not ready and we needed to leave. I was told i have to have to, to which i said fine if there’s no choice i will take it even though my main meal wasn’t ready, the desert was. They then said they would refund the food, but we had to pay for the drinks which we drank (fine -we were happy to do this). However the drinks were £2.99 on the menu (50p) extra for syrup- total being £7, we then questioned why we were charged £14 for two iced lattes- we were told £7 is a non discretionary service charge. All i can say is wow , so i have paid the same cost of my drinks on service charge? Shocking. The service was horrendous. At this point i was absolutely appalled, to be penalised with this charge for a rubbish service. We left it at this point, however the staff members ‘friend’ intervened and abused us out of the shop saying ‘go on get out of here bye bye’-when i challenged her about her customer service she said she wasn’t a staff member however i saw her taking an order and sharing a phone with the other waitress, I assume she was a staff member. When i asked to speak to a manager i was told they are the managers. Is this how you treat regular customers? I’m actually so upset at how we were treated, we we’re actually shouted at and abused out of tue store. Me and my family live locally, i will never recommend this place again to anyone. All it would have taken was an apology for the delay and some good customer service to resolve this but instead we were verbally abused by this lady. My two small children left crying and upset, and hungry . My mother ended up returning to work with no food. What a horrible way to...