Kate's Cafe & Restaurant — Restaurant in London

Good Food, and perhaps good portions too when you finally get served,... But, what a very chaotic and very badly managed establishment?? Kate wants to take all the sales on the one and only till, chat to everyone as she does so, and in the process errors and delays creep in. This is one of the archetypal malaise with Afro Caribbean eateries, that they are very badly managed all over. We have all visited an Indian a Chinese or a Turkish restaurant and we know and can see good efficient customer service at play. The servers don't ignore you and be pandering and giving attention just to their friends, but rather doing everything to spread good custom to every client. They smile are attentive and willing to be custom and civil to you. All said however, when you meander past the negativity, the terribly bad customer service, and just the very chaotic nature of the place from the moment one walks in, and the food EVENTUALLY reaches you - there you find what Good African food actually tastes like: The food is VERY, VERY TASTY and DELICIOUS!!! 🇬🇭 It transports you on a journey of discovery or that of a rediscovery in my case. Kate, the proprietress can really cook good delicious food, but that is all she is good at!!! She lacks GOOD ORGANISATION, PLANNING CUSTOMER SERVICE AND STRUCTURE in her business; and this lack of organisation, lets her down big time. You can wait for over 1 hour just to be served your meal, and that is not good in any food business. But she is apathetic to this, and inspite of this she has good patronage of people who visit her cafe in search of nostalgia. The cafe is very busy as it offers the true authentic and delectable tastes from home in West Africa - mainly from Ghana and Nigeria; and that is where anything that is good about the cafe ends. Kate's cafe is also quite dirty and grubby. It is unkempt, greasy and the tables and chairs are sticky, stained and not aesthetically pleasing in the least. Her toilets are so filthy and smelly too. God only knows, but I won't be surprised if she has a rodent infection. Kate needs to wake up and invest in a revamp, but more importantly she has to employ an organised manager and customer focused team to put some efficient structures in place and set some boundaries in as far as the food ordering and bringing food to the table processes. She needs to stop employing people who have no customer service training or skills. There is a high tendency for the servers to forget or lose your food order or only bring part of the food leading to customers having to chase them to rectify their order correctly. This is especially annoying after you have been waiting for such a long time to get served. This review is two fold: As far as the quality if the Food alone is concerned, the taste and the price, she gets 5 stars!! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ As far as Customer Service and ambience, it is 1 Star! ⭐ " Kate's Cafe needs a major overhaul and quite a lot of work, and training to change the mindset of staff improve the customer experience!!!" Maybe a visit from Newham Council's Trading Standards will do the trick in getting this place cleaned and spruced up!! Don't wait for this Kate the owner, if you really care about customer service. Just sort...

Literally the worst place I went, really regret it and wished I asked for a refund and just left the place. I was so excited to try authentic Jollof rice and have a nice meal. I walked in and there was a pungent smell of fish, especially as it was hot in the restaurant I was not comfortable. However, I didn’t want to be xenophobic and acknowledged that fish can smell unpleasant regardless. I waited to be seated but no one came to seat me or acknowledge me. So we decided to just sit down at a table after 5 minutes. The table was fairly clean but there was hand gel spilt which was not pleasant. The tables didn’t seem to be attended to. We had to ask for menus, we ordered and they didn’t have half the drinks they offer available. I really wanted to support a small business and decided to wait it out maybe they were understaffed. After we ordered, we waited 30 minutes until someone came to give us cutlery even though someone after us had been given cutlery and attended too before us. We enquired about when we were going to get our food and finally got our food an hour later (this was just the starters!!). We were running out of time and didn’t expect our food to take so long when the shop was empty with only two other customers. We asked for our food to be packaged but at this point there was a queue of people at the tills and waited another 15-20 mins for the food to be packaged. Awful experience having to wait a long time to be served, to get our food, to receive any customer service. We spent about £50 here and wished I didn’t. The lamb tasted off. Jollof rice was nice but really dry as if it had been microwaved. I wish I just went to another restaurant that sells Jollof rice. This whole chain of incidents could have been resolved just by being honest and transparent about the wait time and ensuring your checking on your customers, even if it’s just once. You can see us sitting down waiting for a menu, for cutlery, for tissues etc...

Very disappointed — too many issues during my visit.

Firstly, I asked for Kelewele and was told they only had the large portion, even though the menu lists two sizes. That didn’t make sense, so I decided not to order it. Disappointed again!

Then I asked for sprats and luckily I asked if they contain prawns and I was told they were mixed with prawns. I have a seafood allergy. I asked the cashier to check if they had plain sprats, and he came back saying no — but that the kitchen could just pick out the prawns. I was furious. If I hadn’t asked, I could have had a serious allergic reaction. This shows there are no proper allergy controls in place, which is extremely concerning. I don’t mean to criticise a small business unfairly, but this is a serious health risk and could end very badly for someone.

The same issue came up with the salad — it contained egg, and there was no option for one without it. That’s just unreasonable as I do not Egg!

On top of that, the cashier mentioned that the prices on the menu were outdated because they had a meeting the day before and updated the prices. If prices have changed, the menu should be updated immediately — it’s misleading otherwise.

We also ordered a medium stew meal, but the portion looked the same as the small. The only option offered was to buy another meal or purchase the stew and rice separately.

Overall, the cashier seemed unsure and inconsistent with both prices and menu items.

I left very unhappy and, unfortunately, won’t...