Soul Lounge — Restaurant in London

I visited here to celebrate a friends birthday. We had booked a brunch and the food was great and although was to share there was enough for us all and it was very tasty.

The issues were with the service. The waitress was not friendly - she did her job just about but you felt like you were bothering her when you asked a question. I must say that for a bottomless brunch this was the least I had ever had to drink! The cocktails were not great and didn’t seem to have much alcohol. Like many bottomless brunches the staff are attentive and refill your glass when needed however we had to continually ask for drinks and even then she took one order then disappeared even though the rest of us wanted to order too. We were not warned how much bottomless time we had left and again even though our drinks were empty the staff were no where to be found. Poor service for £50 pp. Then - it was around 9:30 and they told us we had to move from our table as it opens up as club. That’s great however it would have been better for us if we were already sitting at one of the tables in the back so we didn’t have to go through all of that moving around. Also the table they then gave us was all the stacked up tables that we were sitting on with a cloth over it. They told us there was a reserved table for other guests coming in but the table was awful (see picture). Even when the people who reserved the table came in they left as it was very disrespectful to expect someone to sit there.

Lastly - I had a big issue with the service in relation to getting change. I had paid in cash for the brunch £40 minus the £10 deposit. Their cleaner in the ladies was clearly working for her money as the toilets were awful. I wanted to give her some money so wanted change for a £20. The girl at the bar dismissively said there no change and carried in what she was doing - so rude. I then went to speak to the manager who told me some story about not being able to give out change. I reminded him I paid for cash for my meal but he continued to say he couldn’t give change even when I explained it was for their cleaner. In the end I bought and drink and guess what I got - change! I then gave the cleaner some money and the problem was solved. It didn’t have to be that difficult.

All in all service was poor - bad attitudes and lack of attentiveness. Music and atmosphere were great although the DJ plays a cycle of songs in the same order throughout the night so if you have been there early enough in the evening you hear it again in the night. All in all £50 for this experience is too much especially as we ended up buying more drinks and the...

DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY! This place is atrocious!!!

I went to Soul to celebrate a friends birthday. We booked a late brunch for 9pm - when we arrived we had to wait outside for 15/20 mins. Although we had pre booked and paid….

Round 1 - was okay…. Sade the waitress really looked after us - she somewhat empathised that our time was significantly reduced by the time we got in, they dressed the table and eventually took our orders. The drinks and food came within a decent timeframe. The food did lack flavour, but we were happy to receive it!

Round 2 - the food was on the table for less than 10 mins and we told we need to leave as another brunch is coming…. No one had the opportunity to try the food - it was all taken away from us and wasted.

We and all other diners in the restaurant were ordered to leave…. Wait outside as there was another brunch - booked for 11:30pm (It was almost midnight!!!!!)

This is a absolutely absurd! I contacted the what’s app number on the website immediately and still haven’t had an adequate response other than “How can I help” after I fully explained what the issue was. It’s a JOKE!

I understand the business is going through rebranding, surely you’d think they want to start as they mean to go on…. Going from Lotus to Soul you’d think there’d be some type of empathy and graciousness in their service. Especially for repeat customers that feel their expectations were not met!!!

ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING

Since leaving this review a lady called Phoebe contacted me and offered my group a one off £50 refund and a complimentary meal at another venue if I removed my review.

When I rejected and asked for a partial refund they said they would only do it if I removed my review.

I said I would edit my review to reflect what they had done to remediate the issue not delete it and she said…

“Unfortunately that won’t be possible as I will need to send to the accounts team once the removal has been done.

Thank you anyway for your time, I’m sorry we could not meet your expectations on this occasion”.

These people are a JOKE and have no level of professionalism they should reconsider working in hospitality!

To top it up it looks like they are asking people to add fake 5* reviews to drown out the genuine not so good reviews… DO NOT GO TO SOUL IN CLAPHAM I’ve also seen multiple videos on TikTok of people giving similar if not worse...

I can’t lie, was not happy with my experience at all. The only thing I enjoyed about Soul was the pink flowers in the decor and the Dragon Roll, everything else was highly disappointing. Me and my boyfriend have been wanting to come to Soul for a while now, and saw it on First Table and thought it was the perfect opportunity to try it out. Upon arrival, we noticed it was very quiet but it was 6pm so we gave it the benefit of the doubt that it was early for them. We should’ve taken that as the first red flag. The waitress came and asked for drinks and when questioned about the mocktails, she didn’t even know they weren’t on the menu! As an experienced waitress, I thought that was shocking, but also gave her the benefit of the doubt, maybe they had just changed the menus or something. We then ordered our starters and then our mains. The starters were okay, with the Dragon Roll being our favourite. Then, the mains arrived. We ordered the Steak and Lobster board and Wagyu steak (both asked for medium rare). Both meats came Med-well to Well done, which was absolutely ridiculous because the place was EMPTY, so why was the quality of food lacking?? I ordered French fries and received potato wedges and my boyfriend ordered French fries and they were forgotten until we asked for them. We also had to ask for the lobster clippers as those weren’t given to us. NOT ONCE did anybody come to ask if we were okay with our meal, only at the end when it was time to pay, which by that time, it’s already way too late. On a side note aswell, rather than checking in on us, all staff were just stood around on their phones and chatting, leaving a table unset for nearly 40 minutes, which took me by surprise because there was nobody else in the place except us.

As somebody who has worked within restaurants for 8+ years, I know what GOOD customer service looks like, and when it needs to be heavily improved, and Soul, I’m sorry to say, you need some work. You can be great, but you need to do better.

I never write bad reviews, but on this occasion, I was THAT disappointed that I had to write one.

Oh, not to mention aswell both of us had a bad belly not even 30 minutes after leaving… not...