Soho Residence — Restaurant in London

The general manager was very unprofessional and rude. It was sincerely disappointing and embarrassing for me and my friend, having to end a night with such disrespect. I was shocked to see how a general manager could behave this disreputable. I would have totally understood if my friend was told that she could not get a refund for a drink that she did not want; precisely a minute after buying it. However instead we were accused of paying with a different method, even though we made it clear that we paid by cash.

Nevertheless the most embarrassing part of the situation was how the manager made it look like my friend was screaming and causing a huge scene, when she really was not. It was a joke when i could see how he had already planned everything out and had a security guard waiting to take us out. Word for word, he was going back and forward and kept speaking to the bartenders and coming back to us, accusing us telling us we paid by card when we didn't. My friend was getting frustrated, who wouldn't. I kept calm and tried to talk to him, to explain to him that we didn't pay by card but it was clearly obvious that he didn't care and didn't want to resolve the situation; he was truly ignoring me.

Moreover i would like to point out how i knew it was planned was that as soon as he said you have to leave this place, in a instant second their was a security guard right next to us to take us outside. I am not joking, it was obvious that it was a set up. The funniest part was how the general manager did not want to interact with me; possibly because he knew he was in the wrong. Well lucky him, he got exactly what he wanted. We didn't have a choice but to leave. We didn't even make a scene but believe me, we were in shock.

In addition, as soon as we got upstairs, walking towards the exit, the manager shoved £2.30p inside my friends hand grinning. When they took us outside the bar, i once again spoke to security guards in a calm voice and asked if i could please talk to him to resolve this situation because it was literally the most embarrassing thing that has happened to me and my friend. I honestly thought maybe there was a misunderstanding but no there wasn't, the general manager behaved in this way intentionally and genuinely was just very rude.

Despite everything, he was inside in-front of the entrance, listening to us and staring at us; talking to the front of house man (smiling) instead of communicating with us to sort out the issue. I can confidently say that he was definitely happy with the outcome. Once we realised there wasn't a way to communicate with the manager as he chose not to, my friend gave the coins back to the security guard and told him to give it to the manager as now the problem is way more than a refund.

As a result, we were humiliated in-front of so many people and have never felt this bad. I saw the manager whom was still watching us as he took the money from the security guard and did not even care one bit. It is fairly appalling to have such a bad experience in a bar in soho, as it was one of our favourite locations.

I am hoping for somebody to contact me regarding this problem, as it is not acceptable. I will carry on contacting the individuals in higher departments to resolve this issue. I guarantee that nobody would want to be treated like this so i am waiting for someone to get in touch with me as soon...

We were visiting Soho Residence for a 30th birthday, to add many of us came from out of London so were sober designated drivers! On arrival the door staff were pretty aggressive, one bouncer pulled a beanie hat off of one of our friends heads. I understand upmarket cocktail bars might opt for no hats but if you’re playing Black Eyed Peas and you have a pixelated print of a silhouetted rave plastered across your wall then you don’t really fit in this bracket of profiling dress code practice. Anyway, we all (now hat-less) settled in to our booked booth to celebrate. Sure the music was dire and it cost over £15 for two bottles of beer, but it’s Soho so not unexpected. What was unexpected was one particular bouncer who persisted on walking circles around our group. We were a group of about ten, half sitting half dancing, and the only standing people in the space, so this really wasn’t a necessary tactic to scare down our dance moves to Amy Winehouse and Duffy. So that’s the picture: five to ten people, half of whom are sober, singing along to “Mercy” whilst some aggressively poised dude walks in a circle around us and tells us off for putting our glasses on the wrong table. Awful. To top it all off, the most problematic of all, one of our friends (a queer woman with short hair) used the bathroom. On re-entering the room, this bouncer approached her and told her she had to leave because she had used the ladies bathroom. Once she made her gender clear to him he made a huff and walked off, no apology. We went upstairs to speak to the manager. Having all worked in hospitality ourselves we were fairly confident they’d be able to dissolve the situation and pave the way for a more inclusive environment. Wrong we were. He proceeded to ask us repeatedly why it wasn’t our friend talking for herself, to defend the aggressive bouncer although admitting he wasn’t surprised, and on discussing gender he abruptly decided the best tactic was to have a go at US for not asking him his pronouns, even though in our conversation with him we’d never gendered him?! There wasn’t even an apology. For soho, the “gay centre of london” it was pretty darn shocking and we’ve never felt less welcome or safe in a space. Thankfully it was us and not someone struggling more with their gender...

I booked a table at Soho Residence for drinks, however, when I received the booking confirmation, the email stated "Soho Residence is a strictly over 21’s venue and ID will be required for all guests." Since the people in my group for the booking were under 21, I had to cancel the booking. One of my friends decided to call Soho Residence to clarify the over 21's rule as there was absolutely no mention of it anywhere on their website. The woman over the phone stated that the venue was actually an over 18's venue. My friend texted me this information, to which I responded by sending the booking confirmation email (which contains the over 21's policy). My friend then decided to call Soho Residence again just to double check, which then led the woman on the phone to state that "we only put that statement [the over 21's policy] in the emails because we are aiming for an older client demographic, but we do still serve over 18's." This was relayed to me via text by my friend and confused me greatly, leading me to ring the venue in order to kindly suggest that they potentially change the phrasing of the policy in the email so to avoid further confusion in the future for other potential customers. Despite my kind and calm tone over the phone (as I know dealing with the public can be incredibly difficult at times), the woman over the phone was incredibly rude and short with me , stating that I had called her three times now and that she had told me the same thing three times - however, this was the first time I had ever called the bar. She then abruptly hung up the phone after I calmly reiterated that this was simply a suggestion to avoid further confusion and lost customers in the future. This customer service experience was incredibly bad and definitely not something that I would expect from an establishment that claims to be upmarket and luxurious. I hope that this was simply just one bad experience and not a common occurrence...