Palaette London Hackney — Restaurant in London

I would highly recommend that you ONLY eat at this place if you have 3 HOURS to spare. Firstly, our table for 6 was booked for 1pm and we were not seated at a table until 30 minutes later downstairs. We received the menus very late and they were VERY sticky. Eventually a member of staff managed to come over to take our order. They did not seem too keen on serving us as we received a lot of dirts and had to constantly call them because no one was there to serve us downstairs, they were all upstairs. There were NO social distancing measures put in place at the cafe and the members of staff were standing very close to us whilst taking the order and serving our food. I almost got hit on the head with a plate because a male employee decided to serve it over my head, I literally ducked my head. The drinks arrived an HOUR after we placed our order. The strawberry mojitos were very tangy and the cappuccino was cold. I received a replacement for the cappuccino and a small quantity of sugar packets after I asked for it. When I asked for more sugar, they gave me an entire pot full of sugar packets, sarcastic much?! The female employee that took our order, wrote down notes for dietary requirements. My friend ordered "The Gemini" without egg and an avocado as a replacement. She received the meal with an egg, and when she said she did not ask for it, they said it comes with it. Well she did mention that she did not want an egg in the beginning no?! A member of staff asked if it was okay if they just removed the egg? My friend asked for a new meal but she received a new meal within minutes. This meant that they just took the egg off! And then the avocado was missing, which we had to ask for again. The "fluffy" pancakes with banana and maple syrup was disappointing, they were not so fluffy and did not have any taste to it. The maple syrup was not nice and the banana was placed in so weirdly. The portion was small too. However, the french toast tasted good and the presentation of the meals were good. When we went to pay the bill, they added £12.11 service charge and we were not happy to pay it because we did not receive good customer service. The female employee at the counter was very assertive that we have to pay the service charge, but we knew it was optional. We would have been happy to pay service charge if we received good customer service but unfortunately we did not. It was not a great experience and I am surprised that they are still busy despite no one wanting to move around. They were very unprofessional and unorganised. But the food...

Came here on a Sunday morning for brunch with a friend. She had previously been here and mentioned the shashuka was good so I had built up my expectations for the food.

There was a queue when we got there but thankfully we only had to wait for 10 minutes or so. Worth noting that they only accepted cash when we were there as they explained they were having problems with their card machine so remember to bring cash. Otherwise there's AMT on the high street so it's easy to retrieve money.

My friend went with The Lotus Biscoff and I ordered the pretty pancakes with fried chicken on the side. The pancakes came with plenty of fruits and generous portion of Nutella which I was really happy about. And I thought adding fried chicken on the side was a great idea as it kind of balanced out the sweetness from having a lot of Nutella in one go. I really liked my food overall, partly because I had been craving pancakes for a while so it just hit the spot for me on that day. I wouldn't say it was outstanding though. That said, for London prices I thought this was quite good value for money. They gave me 4 pancakes even though they weren't necessarily big ones but the general portion was certainly big. Coffee was ok in terms of taste, texture and richness. It's on the slightly strong side which is very much my preference. Worth noting the massive size of my cappuccino here which was great if they don't have two different sizes (regular and large).

Service on the other hand was average. The first waitress who took our order clearly looked like she wasn't enjoying her job or she had had enough of servicing customers. She didn't smile at all and didn't come across as friendly or approachable. So I gave their service a 3-star. The other waiter who came and took our plates away later was nicer. Overall, there is definitely room for improvement here.

Vibes wise it's pretty much a place designed to encourage people to take as many photos as they want to post on Instagram. They have the classic pinkish vibes everywhere, pretty cutleries and flowers and the classic golden words written on the wall. Won't say I am a big fan of it but it does make all the photos a lot nicer because the background is all so vanilla.

I would be happy to come back and try other items on the menu but it's worth saying this is definitely not one of the top brunch cafés I have been...

If I could give this a minus then I would do so. Disgusting Behaviour by all the staff. There was a group of 9 of us (one being a 6 year old and 9 month old baby) and they refused to seat us. We went very early at 9.30am, there was no queue and restaurant was empty. Initially they said there weren’t tables big enough to seat all of us together and we said that’s fine we will split up over a few tables as we will be ordering separately anyway. One of the waiters then dictated to us that if they do seat us then we can’t mill around or walk to the other tables in our group. This, I found really bizarre so when I questioned him saying that there are no government restrictions so why were they saying this. There were about 7/8 staff members and restaurant empty. Suddenly another girl appeared and from the onset she was rude and argumentative, categorically stating that they cannot serve a party of 9. Despite telling them repeatedly that we will sit separate and order separate they would not budge. Every single member of staff were rude and obnoxious. There was seating outside, when we asked if we could sit there and again they refused to seat/serve us. They kept going on about policy and when we asked to see it they get verbally abusive. As we were standing outside that same rude waitress rushed towards in a very threatening manner as if she wanted to attack us. Their stance really did not make sense because on social media you can very obviously see that they do serve groups. The only thing I can imagine is that they are racist and took an instant dislike to us. Their customer services skills are beyond awful and which they seriously need brushing up on. Businesses take off on the goodwill of customers and treating us the way they did is unacceptable and disgusting. We certainly will never go back to this place and spread the word so that nobody else is treated in such a disparaging and disgusting manner. Shame on...