Old Street Records — Restaurant in London

Like someone else said, if I could have given a lower rating than the minimum, I would! This place should be avoided at ALL costs, especially if you are out celebrating a special occasion. My friends and I were out on Saturday night, celebrating two birthdays, we queued for a long time and paid £10 entry (overpriced for the state of the place). The place was rammed, it took a while to order a drink too, the bar staff seem okay, but the cloakroom staff were quite rude. Our first hour and a half here was good, although the toilets were disgraceful, if you need the toilet, go in advance as you’ll probably be queuing for 15 minutes! The state of the toilets are disgusting honestly, I can’t believe the owners/managers are okay with how they are. Smashed glasses and sick in the toilets is not how it should be. (And only three cubicles?) This isn’t the only negatives to the place, we had a shocking experience because of the outrageously rude bouncers and extremely unprofessional manager. My partner was removed from the venue very randomly, without warning, they threw him out the front door and threw his coat at him, stating he had to leave. (Not like he had a choice.) When we asked why they decided to remove him, they gave us TWO DIFFERENT reasons, the first reason was that he was with a group of “troublesome” men, when we stated that he was with us, the reason suddenly changed to my partner being “on drugs” we asked the security guard for proof but he had NO physical proof to prove his theory, they refused to search him or provide CCTV footage, which makes no sense whatsoever. They claimed to have seen him in the toilet an hour before, which goes against their theory, if they claimed to have seen drugs being taken in their venue, they should have removed him at the time…not an hour later. The assistant manager Billy made the issue worse, he picked out certain physical attributes of my partner and claimed this was evidence of him being on drugs. This is outrageous to do so to a customer, it’s disgusting to see someone abuse their power in such a way. Billy was incredibly unprofessional and rude towards us, refusing to listen to us and interrupting us as we spoke to him. We asked Billy to search my partner but he refused to do so, we asked him for any CCTV footage but he denied this very quickly. This overall experience is a JOKE, alongside their no solo entry policy, I would highly recommend to anyone to avoid Old Street Records, it won’t be worth your time or money, or wasting a good time with your friends. We all left after the incident, as we didn’t feel welcome or happy to stay since my partner was kicked out, instead we went to the bar next door, Be At One, which was lovely and well worth our money and time. I would never return to Old Street Records, but I would recommend going to Be At One or Blue’s kitchen. I hope this review doesn’t receive a fake apology and patronising comment from the owner like the other negative reviews, either sort this out or don’t even bother replying as “sorry” doesn’t...

Avoid this venue.

When we arrived for our reservation at 6.15 PM, we asked to move to a table with more comfortable seating as I have a bad back. The waitress assured us that we could move to the corner table, but promised that we could subsequently move back to our table at 7.30pm as there were others arriving for a reservation at that time.

In the meantime, we ordered pizzas and drinks. Whilst the drinks were lovely, we were presented with an incorrect pizza order. However, the waitress that delivered our food was extremely apologetic and resolved this issue professionally and in a timely fashion.

At 7.30pm, another waiter approached us and asked us to stand for the rest of the night, as the group who had reserved the current table that we had been allocated had arrived and they had given our original table (which was reserved until 9.15) away to walk-in customers without informing us. After a discussion, the waiter offered to compensate us for our meals and cocktails if we agreed to sit on another table (of 6) with two empty seats alongside another group of 3 individuals. Whilst reluctant, we agreed on the promise of such compensation.

Later, the same waiter approached us and informed us the manager had refused to compensate us. My partner was taken away to talk to the manager (Calum Green) who proceeded to patronise and antagonise her. He informed her that she would not be receiving the promised compensation and she persistently asked her to communicate with both the waitress and the waiter involved. He was speaking to them both when I approached him and questioned him on his attitude towards my partner (who had organised the evening as a birthday present for myself).

He abruptly proceeded to have the bouncer remove both my partner and I from the premises, citing my conduct as reason for removal. He said we were wasting his 'valuable time' and stated that he was required to assist behind the bar. Yet as he had such conversation with us, he proceeded to vape outside in the smoking area with seemingly no consideration of his other duties.

I am extremely disappointed and upset by the conduct of Calum in this situation. Both the waiter and waitress were polite and amenable, apologising for the confusion over tables and agreeing to make amends where possible. However, the attitude of the management in this establishment (Calum Green) was extremely unprofessional.

The actual venue was lovely and the music and drinks were brilliant. However, due to the attitude of the management at this establishment I can only strongly recommend that you avoid this particular venue and instead head to another branch such as Venn...

Music Ok, spiking not so much

I attended the club with my friends, 5 girls and my boyfriend. While we were downstairs there were 2 men who started behaving strangely around me and my friends so my boyfriend tried to get in between to make sure we were alright. Last thing I knew they said something to him and he then suddenly turned to me and said they injected his arm and he could feel it going numb. I immediately pulled him upstairs to the security and bouncers. My boyfriend was clearly not ok and started to behave very strangely, convulsing and breathing very fast. He also became very paranoid and confused with what was happening. Upon seeing this, the security not only did not really bother to check what had happened and tried to throw him out rather than help- when we explained the situation, one of my friends went to point the two men out and nothing was done. They were left in the club and security claimed they had no reason to do anything as they couldn’t see anything on CCTV. Other than one lady bouncer who attempted to help and took down our details, nothing was done and we had to take care of the situation completely on our own. We were not taken seriously and if anything, the staff denied that he was actually spiked and said it seemed he was convulsing and reacting from “drinking too much”. Thank you to the lady bouncer but other than that the whole situation was disgusting and handled so so poorly. I don’t recommend coming there.

PS: Emailed Joe as per comment and...