Siam Central — Restaurant in London

THE WORST PLACE! Do not even bother coming here!!!!! If I could give this place zero ? I would ! Myself and my partner came here to celebrate his birthday and stumbled upon this ‘ little gem’ so we thought. We love Thai food and this place was perfect. In terms of the food , the food was lovely ! Overall we rated it 7.5/10. Cocktails need work : 3/10. HOWEVER , u see the current manager in there? He needs to go ASAP or Siam Central will be run to the ground ! No customer service skills, no conflict resolution skills, effective communication? What is that to him? He has none of that!. He basically lacks all the core skills of a good employee let alone a manager and it reflects on the employees. Just because I politely declined to pay service charge I was INSULTED! Baring in mind that service charge is OPTIONAL and BY LAW I am not inclined to pay and should not be FORCED. When we politely declined the old bill, The employee rudely slammed a new bill on our table and proceeded to comment “next time takeaway only! “ before storming off like a little child. very rude, very condescending, very unprofessional. On top of that the ‘manager’ whilst poorly un-attempting to solve the issue then stated that due to ME the customer not paying the service charge, his employees wouldn’t get paid ?????? How does that even make any sense? This lead me to think Are these employees being paid properly by this company? Are they being paid atleast minimum wage because I don’t understand how an employee would be getting paid fairly from a customers service charge bill -which is OPTIONAL!!! There was so much more to this issue but if I mention all this review would be too long. I urge you to please take your hard earned money elsewhere where you know the service you receive is of high standard and management are truly competent to do their job. This place is an actual joke!! New manager PLEASE! And customer service training for the current employees to teach them hope NOT to approach customers who are spending their hard earned money. No customers = no business! Remember that and be respectful always ! Kinkao in docklands is a lovely Thai spot if anyone is ever around...

I went here with my friend on a summer evening and asked if we could sit outside to which one of the servers answered that we couldn't sit outside because the kitchen was about to close but we could inside (which we found confusing). But he didn't indicate that the whole restaurant was going to close in 20 minutes because I've been to restaurants where the kitchen closes but the restaurant doesn't for hours. He said "for you, we'll keep the kitchen open" so that we could order. I wish he hadn't. Because there is nothing worse than eating when they're picking up everybody's plates the second their done, sweeping the floors, already starting the gossip session about the day and pacing while we eat, so that we don't have time to talk or eat in peace because they clearly want us out. For that, you should've told us that you were going to start clearing everything now the moment we came in. They even came to us in the middle of our meal, fork in hand, to tell us if we could pay now because they were closing the register. Ridiculous. Eventually we felt so pressured and watched that we asked for doggy bags becauze they clearly didn't want us there. But you should want your clients to have a good experience not just get them to come in at any cost. And at the end one has the audacity to say "you can stay even though he really wants to go home" speaking about another server (to which we replied: "we can tell"). He only said that once the food was already in the boxes instead of when his colleague went to fetch the boxes...sure you can say it now when it's too late. Btw we're young women in our 20's and it bothers me because they would NEVER make that joke to people my parents' age but to us yes just because we're young and it's like you can disrespect us more easily? You should never ever make customers feel like they're not wanted, it's literally the hospitality industry... We don't know your schedule, you do, so let us know with all honesty that since you're closing soon we're going to feel rushed during the meal. We were there for only 20 minutes before we felt the need to leave and it's not a fast food place...but we felt kicked out from the moment...

I have been here on 2 separate occasions. The first time I chose a tofu fish because I'm Muslim and I didn't realise they served halal chicken. The tofu dish was good but I didn't enjoy it that much as I don't like tofu all that well. The 2nd time I went I tried a chicken dish and it was good and enjoyable, I did ask for a specific type of rice side dish but they gave me the wrong one; this maybe shows the staff need to listen a little better when taking an order. For dessert, I had fried ice cream which was great and I really really liked it, it was something new to try and I'd highly recommend it. For the price of the meal it was of a decent standard.

I did have one problem when paying for the meal. As I went with a friend, and as we're both students, we did not want to pay the service charge on the meal. I realise that many might have an issue with this topic; however service charges is OPTIONAL everywhere and we were under no obligation to pay it. We expressed that we didn't want to and the man who had been serving us that night, who had been so amiable with us the entire duration we were there, quickly turned and told us we "had to" pay it. We said we didn't want to because it's optional and he told us we had to because it makes their wages. I will not delve too deep into this, but I thought this was very rude and he made threats such as, if we didn't pay it then next time we came he wouldn't give us a table. After a good meal and enjoying the pleasant atmosphere of the restaurant, the waiter made me leave with a bad taste in my mouth.

Despite this unfortunate incident, I cannot say the food, the atmosphere or the service was bad. Would recommend for any halal foodie looking for somewhere to have some...