MYST WEST — Restaurant in London

Review Apr 2024 (4 years later and the music is STILL EAR DRUM RUPTURING LOUD)

A group of us went around 7:30pm as we were hungry. We ordered a variety of items from the menu. Chops, burgers, dynamite shrimp... All the food was sub par. The burgers were completely plain. The dynamite shrimps were something you could easily get from the supermarket and make yourself. The chops were mediocre at best too. For food just don't bother coming here. You will pay a premium for absolutely basic level food. For the price it's not up to any decent standard.

We noticed that there was no ventilation. Not sure how they get around the smoking shelter regulations but we couldn't see any openings anywhere to allow for smoke to travel out. We didn't do shisha first hand bet definitely did it second hand 🫠. I noticed that they've started to serve alcohol leading me to believe that there has been a change in management. Service was borderline meh. It used to be excellent many years ago. But the absolute killer was the unnecessarily loud music. So loud that you had to shout at the person next to you to be heard whilst risking spiting your food in their ear. The music was also full of profanity and colourful language using the N word etc (is that still "cool"?). You CANNOT socialise here. CANNOT! IT'S NOT A CLUB! YOU ARE SEATED THROUGHOUT YOUR VISIT FOR GOD'S SAKE! This was my criticism 4 years ago and they still insist on puncturing your ear drums. For excellent shisha and decent chai go to Bubbles in Kingston. AVOID THIS PLACE!

Review from 4 years ago: I feel I need to explain my 2 star feedback and why I have been critical and disappointed. The decor and service were definitely outstanding, that to me makes up about 25% of the reason for going to a shisha lounge. I would have taken photos of the place but there were too many people and I respect people's privacy and don't like to take people's photos without their permission. When I do I always blur out faces. I did notice a chap taking photos with a semi professional camera. Not sure what was happening there but we weren't informed that our photos would be taken and how they would be shared. I shrugged this off, but it did stick out to me.

What really killed the visit was the loudness of the music. It felt like a club. I don't mind background ambient music, you need that. But places that don't let you hear yourself think are the worst type of places to socialise. It's counter intuitive. I've been to conference after parties and given the same feedback. If the music is too loud you can't network or socialise therefore objective defeated. When you go out with friends you want to have a laugh, a chat. But I constantly felt I had to lean forward and shout to be heard by my friend. I also was conscious that people were sitting close to us, so a part of me didn't want to disturb them and share my conversations at the same time. I think we must have stayed there for less than an hour before we decided that we were mostly trying to lip read. The only time we could actually talk was in-between songs. We even contemplated going to the McDonald's next door, at least they had coffee and no noise.

Note to Management: Everything is great, but you need to set a limit on the music. Have a method of normalising this and ensuring that it doesn't exceed a certain volume. If you have paid a photographer to take photos of the public you need permission from the customers. We were not told of our photos were being taken. Fix the music and I'd be glad to revisit and amend my review. For now the above is my personal...

Visited this place 2 days ago.

The decor and overall look of this place was very pretty. Even the toilets were quite luxurious. It was very warm, they had heaters above every table. They opened the roof sometimes which was quite cool, seeing as it’s right near the airport, you could see planes taking off. I see it as a good tourist attraction and smart that they were based in a hotel.

However, the lounge was easy to be seen from outside but it wasn’t clear where the entrance was. The waiter inside kindly directed us inside the hotel but once inside, there were no signs or anything. The hotel staff seemed busy. Finally we were directed to myst, and were let in by a kind security guard.

We were seated very quickly, there was a fair amount of people there already. It got busy around 10pm, we were there from 8pm. We ordered our food which came quite quickly and was tasty. BUT. Once we ordered our drinks and shisha, the waitress seemed to drift off and was very hard to flag her over. Our shisha took about 30 mins to arrive even though our drinks took about 15 min. We kept asking her where it was and she kept saying it’s coming it’s coming. Getting more attitude each time we asked. Finally the owner approached us and asked if everything was okay, to which we replied no the shisha is taking ages. And the waitress came back and said 2 mins, and finally we got our shisha.

The music was great, gave the place a really good vibe, perfect for nights out. It was quite loud the later it got though, but I enjoyed this. Come to Myst if you’re looking for a relaxed but fun night out with your friends, but dont come if you’re more looking to talk as you won’t hear each other 😂

Fast forward a bit, I was trying to get the waitresses attention and she looked me in my eyes and walked straight past and ignored me completely. I looked around to see if anyone noticed and Everyone was equally shocked. Finally when we got up to pay, we saw that the things she told us they were out of, wasn’t taken off the bill. So we had to delete a few things before paying.

Overall service was slow and waitress had an attitude problem clearly, but everything else was perfect. Food was nice, shisha was lovely, atmosphere and appearance was stunning. Just train your...

DO NOT GO HERE IF YOU ARE BLACK! I have never experienced such terrible customer service as I have at an establishment last night. From the moment we had entered the place, the “manager” of MYST had been looking at my group of friends (all black) as if we were hooligans. We are a group of women 25+ who had just enjoyed a birthday dinner at an upscale restaurant and wanted to unwind at a shisha cafe, however we were not met with this experience.

Our table was very wobbly to the point where we couldn’t put a drink on it and had asked if we could have this changed, the manager had charged over to us and aggressively told me that we are a group of 7 (we were a group of 6 actually) and that he will let this “Slide”. Not addressing the fact that we had asked for a table change, I proceeded to tell him that I did call the day before which he interjected and said that was impossible as he had the phone all day, which I responded to that he would remember then that I had asked if there was a limit on the group of people that can come which he had said “No you can come with whoever you like”.

After 90 minutes, he had waved the receipt in my face and told us our time is up, and that we had to immediately leave, Although there were many groups of people (Larger than 6 might I add) who came before us, and were not to leave. We were conveniently the only black people in the establishment, we had asked if we could bring out our cake to sing happy birthday to my friend, which he refused to as this would take “another 15 minutes” and would not accommodate us at all.

I have never felt so targeted in an establishment, especially as we were the only black people. Such terrible management and customer service, and we were spoken to so aggressively on numerous occasions. PLEASE SAVE YOUR MONEY AS THIS PLACE IS OVERPRICED AND TERRIBLE! You can tell how rude they are just by their responses to other customers under the other negative reviews. Will never step...