Slemani Restaurant (Kurdish Kebabs, Dolma, Patcha, Qozi Ealing London) — Restaurant in London

AND NOW FOR A “REAL” UNBIASED, UNPAID REVIEW!

The place was almost empty when we arrived, mid afternoon with lots of free tables, waitress 1 greeted the 3 of us with no smile or emotion, I asked if we could sit in a booth as it looked comfortable with padded seats, a lot of them were free, she refused and told us to sit on an uncomfortable smaller table for 3. Ramadan may have had an affect, she was probably hungry hence the expression on her face!

Complimentary soup & salad arrived pretty quickly, including menus. Whilst having the soup the same waitress came to take our order, she could see menus were not even touched, I said we were not ready, abruptly unfortunately, as I’m an experienced restaurant goer and my first impressions were not good, read on and you’ll see why my hunch was correct.

She must have noticed we weren’t going to get on so sent the second waitress to take our order after we pointed out that we were ready to order. She was much more friendly. Ordered the food, and for my drink I ordered a dough or yogurt drink, in the menu it said it was a pint, got half, pointed it out to her but she insisted that they only provided a jug or glass but not pint, we double checked the menu and it definitely said Pint so felt cheated. Whilst ordering food, I had my eyes on a lamb shawarma as shown by a picture on menus, she said they don’t do lamb but just chicken. I asked her again if they ran out or they just don’t do lamb shawarma, she confirmed they never did lamb shawarma, although it was on the menu.

Food arrived, I had ordered a kofte kebab, my son pointed out that there was a hair in my dish, it was sent back, luckily I received a fresh plate, the kofte was awful, broke to small pieces when touched, trust me, I know my kofte!

Toilets had a very dirty cloth hung on towel stand, probably used to clean glass in the loo, but some would have taken it as a bathroom towel (see pic).

There was an electric hand dryer next to the towel rail but it was wired illegally as its wires and socket were plugged right underneath, against building regulation rules (see pic).

Extractor wasn’t working and was hanging down from the ceiling, see pic.

After the meal they brought over complimentary tea, too dark as it was over brewed, they cleared the table of plates and cutlery but didn’t bother wiping the table which was full of residue especially from bread.

Icing on the cake was when trying to pay, they wanted cash as their credit card payment system wasn’t working, so they say, heard that many times in the past, usual excuse to save paying tax and vat, waitress asked me to go to an ATM outside, luckily I had enough cash.

Bottom line is I’m not sure who has been leaving all the positive feedbacks on Google for these guys, which fooled us to visit the place in the first instance, but the owners need to read my comments and perhaps spend time on training staff in customer services.

Edit following restaurant reply: Mate I don’t go around leaving fake reviews!! My reviews are always genuine, this is why Google reviews are here, sometimes they go the other way. And please don’t make up stories covering your backs. There was no out of order sign on WC, waitress never explained tables were booked but said they were for 5, I never aggressively sent food back it’s a total lie, after one bite I noticed a hair, called the waitress, she dealt with it well and said a fresh one was prepared, that’s it, nothing aggressive about that! As a manager or owner take these reviews on the chin, constructive criticism is a good thing so you learn and improve, no need to...

Review guilting to the fakest degree.

The height of my experience here was the free soup and salad. Everything else went downhill from there. We were given all of 1 minute before the server came and awkwardly stood there with his notebook essentially pressuring us to hurry up and order when I wasnt even halfway done with the soup. I asked twice if I could get a few minutes to actually look at the menu and was completely ignored but I'll chalk this up to language barrier as the guy's English wasn't great. Feeling pressured I just went with a burger and chips to which the server began with the extremely awful acting skills saying 'just for you I'm going to give you an extra portion of chips my gift to you!' Making a big deal out of it as if they dont have an abundance of chips not to mention the original portion was more than enough so those actually went to waste. The burger arrived cold. I also had the opportunity to try the dolma my friend ordered and it's a far cry from proper Iraqi dolma. The only existing taste was lamb fat. Very bland. Also want to note that I was being asked if everything is okay every 2 minutes which got very annoying so for the managers benefit: stop telling your servers to do this fake stuff. IT has the opposite effect to what you are trying to achieve! The cherry on top of this abysmal experience came at the end when our server asked if he could offer us some tea to which we accepted. This is when he began his begging for a review making very sure we knew his name and the name of the restaurant. While this is normal nowadays what he then did was stand there staring at us creepily waiting for us to take out our phones and start typing!!! Even worse after 5 minutes of waiting it was apparent he completely forgot our tea so we just paid and left. Buddy learn how to stop guilting your guests for reviews and maybe watch some videos online about how to socialise properly. I'm not going to name this server but you can see the suspicious amount of times his name comes up in other reviews. This is the first time in my life I left a bad review for a place and that should tell you how annoying review guilting has gotten nowadays. I hope this is taken as...

We are regular customers and bring a large family group most times. The owners keep changing. Unfortunately , recently, the new owner employed staff that can't speak or understand English well and they always mess up the orders. They also rely on memory rather than writing down the orders. l suggest that you keep repeating what you ordered to ensure you get the right order. Else you will be very disappointed.

Also, I would recommend skipping their starters since it really deteriorated in quality and they increased their prices while shrinking the quantity too especially the dips and tabalulah.

The supervisor of the staff is known to be rude and arrogant and have very little understanding of customer service. If i were the owner, I will get him replaced immediately because he brings a bad name to the restaurant, which most times have really good food because I think they have a good chef.

We had two encounters recently with the same guy who when asked refused to even give his name. Perhaps he is scared of reviews. He kept arguing and arguing when challenged about the wrong order we had instead of apologising.

I think the owner, who is a very nice Kaka, should put cameras in place to check how his staff is behaving with their customers.

We will give the restaurant one more chance because we like the kebabs and to see if they can improve the...