The Real Greek - Spitalfields — Restaurant in London

I do not remember being faced down by a more obnoxious manager in a restaurant. I took my date to the Real Greek restaurant in Spitalfield Market today, confirmed with the seating staff that the restaurant accepts the One4All pre-paid debit card, then ordered and ate the meal. When it came time to pay the bill, the waitress did not seem to be familiar with the swiping mechanism on the hand held machine, so took the card to the manageress to sort out the problem. About 10 minutes later the manageress came to my table with the card to say Real Greek does not accept One4All cards. She added, falsely, that only the company names scattered on the front of the card accepted the cards. This, of course, she had just made up. So I pulled up the One4All app on my phone and showed her that, indeed, Real Greek actually does accept One4All cards! In response, the manergress the lied again, explaining that only certain Real Greek restaurants accept the card. So, I asked her why her staff had told me this restaurant did accept the card. At this point, she asked me to prove there was money on the card. The neighbouring tables were all staring following this drama closely. So I pulled up the app again and showed her £105 available. Only at this stage, did the manageress swipe the card herself- and it worked! This, of course, means that she had not bothered to actually swipe the card herself before coming to our table. And that means that she prioritised lying to a customer twice actually over checking out what the problem was - in this case, a poorly trained waitress. So then I said to her, "since you have lied to me twice, embarrassed me in front of my date and nearby customers, I do not want to pay the optional 5% service charge that had been attached to my bill". But, unbelievably, the manageress, (who when I asked her name said she was Al**dra -- possibly another lie) refused to return the tip saying I should have told her before she swiped the card! Actually, she should have refunded the entire cost of the meal, having put me on the spot publically for no reason other than she preferred to lie and lie again rather than try to swipe the card herself. If she were my employee she would get the sack. Now in cases such as these it is customary for the customer service team reading these reviews to reach out and say "this is terrible, we are so sorry to hear you were not satisfied. Please call us to further discuss..." The reason those responses seem so familiar is they are made by bots. So just to be clear, before Real Greek's bot responds, resolving this complaint will require Real Greek to give me £100 voucher and for the manergeress to give me a written letter apologising for lying to me and being so lazy she could not bother to...

I had booked a table for lunch, we arrived and waited 15minutes before we were acknowledged. The only reason we were acknowledged was because we had begun wandering around the restaurant looking for someone to seat us as we were on a time limit and this was supposed to be a treat for a birthday. Please note the restaurant was not full and there were around 6 staff we could see present.

We ordered 2 glasses of prosecco which unfortunately were warm and unpleasant.

Service- whilst well meaning, was pretty poor. We mentioned 3 times, to 3 different waiting staff about the warm drinks and they said sorry and "I'll go and sort that out " meaning they went away not to return...

Food was tasty and hot. Although the bulgur wheat side was a little soggy compared to previous occasions.

Asking for the bill, we waited 20 more minutes to get this, by now there were 3 tables of 2 people only in the place and no sight of any of our previously concerned waiters who were sorting the warm drinks.

We had to keep asking for basics.

Our main waiter kindly agreed to remove the prosecco charge - after explaining to him a fourth time now that we had had warm drinks and his colleagues had told us they would deal with it for us but hadn't. However it was quite prolonged and embarrassing, not to mention the additional delays made us late for work.

Ultimately the real Greek does nice food but the service at this venue was haphazard, disorganised and extremely slow / uncaring (except for our main waiter who's name I did not catch unfortunately), almost as if none of the team knew/cared what they were doing... Won't be...

We have just had lunch at The Real Greek to celebrate a colleagues 50th birthday. I have to say that, in the end, the restaurant outdid itself thanks to the fantastic and excellent service by a waiter called Michael who surpassed his duties as a waiter and definitely, most definitely, should have been the MANAGER of this very nice restaurant. I say this because the start of our meal was rather a disaster in the hands of the Manager on duty at the time. We had pre-ordered all our menu selections for 7 people. The Manager informed us that the main course that 5 of us had ordered was not available which was just one those things. We reordered alternative dishes and that was no problem. After 45 minutes waiting for starters, I went to ask the Manager if we were going to be served and I am sorry to say that her response was full of attitude and was not professional. It is only thanks to the excellent waiter, Michael, that our visit to The Real Greek was redeemed. I can't thank him enough for his attentiveness and for the generous items that he gave us on the house to apologise for the lack of service. This is a very good restaurant and I think the experience we suffered with the Manager on duty was just our bad luck. However, I think this Manager needs to go through a course of retraining and Michael should be promoted to a Manager as he has all the skills and attributes to do the job perfectly unlike the Manager who was supposed to...