Louis Restaurant — Restaurant in Manchester

The ambience and live music was great, but the staff need to do better. I can't stand it when staff have an air of arrogance because they work in a high-end establishment. This is coming from someone who has been a waitress in a range of hotels/restaurants, so I know exactly how mentally taxing/physically draining this work can be but you never let your table feel that. The blonde polish waitress was abrupt/quite rude. Everyone on our table thought so. We've eaten at Tattu and Fenix and always had a nice experience. On top of that, we were a group of 11, split across two tables. Six on one and five on the other. When the waitress brought our bill over, I asked her if this was just the bill for our table of six. She confirmed and said yes. We checked it and over £120 worth of deposits hadn't been deducted. We told her and she rectified this, but then she kept repeating "Once you've settled the bill, we will merge the tables" This made absolutely no sense to any of our party. Once we settled the bill for our table of six, why would we then merge our paid bill with the other table? We'd paid for our food and drinks, so what would be left to merge? What's more, our table was leaving, so again, what exactly was there to merge? Even when myself and several members of our party explained this and said there's no need to merge anything as our bill is settled and we are leaving, she just kept saying "And then we'll merge the tables" With no explanation as to what she meant and without listening to a single word we were saying. It was like she was intentionally making it more confusing or thinking we were more intoxicated then we were and trying to get extra money out of us. My friend had to physically take the bill and do the math because the waitress made it so difficult. We paid what we had to pay and left. 30 minutes after we left, I called my cousin who said it was an absolute nightmare and they were still there trying to sort their bill! Apparently the bill that was brought over to the table of 5, was £300+ which didn't add up as we'd already paid £400+ on our table and they were a smaller group who had much less and also had their £20 deposits to deduct, so I'm guessing this was the "merging of the bills". In the end, the manager (I think) apologised for everything and charged correctly, but it isn't the point. This was my birthday meal and it was ruined by all the confusion which left a lot of my party frustrated/having cross words with some of the staff, something we would've rather avoided but when your staff aren't listening and making things more complex, it's no surprise emotions run high. My friend also asked if you could do something for my birthday e.g a free dessert/drink. We were told you "don't do anything like this" but upon checking your Tripadvisor reviews, I seen that another customer was given a glass of champagne for his birthday. The fact that our waitress told us you don't do anything like this, shows the treatment we got at our table. Despite this my kind friend still tipped her generously. Our table was spending £28 on double spirits, £60 on wine and £17 on cocktails, the least you could do was give a slice of apple pie with a candle in. Onto the food, the starters were nice (mac and cheese balls, calamari) but nothing to write home about. The Spaghetti aglio e olio was in a tasteless, watery bath, I honestly couldn't taste any garlic, just the chilli on top. I had to drown it in parmesan and it was still rubbish. Considering you're meant to have an Italian chef this was such a let down, pasta is something you should be getting right. Maybe try Cibus (Levenshulme) which is owned by Italians who make authentic sauces/pastas. I also didn't like the rules stipulating dress code, but then there was a guy in a hoody and jeans. You either enforce the rules or don't They also don't cover your phone and allow pictures so the rules are all pointless. All in all, because of the completely avoidable trouble with the bills, the mid food and staff (bar the male manager) none of our group of 11...

First I want to start off by saying it was our 2 year anniversary, something I made sure to specify whilst booking and also informed the lady who took us to our table. This then was not mentioned by the waiter at all, the entire duration, there are so many places we could have gone that would have made us feel special or at the very least said something about it, especially in a fine dining space?

Secondly, what is the point of having a rule book and stating that you have strict policies on dress code etc if this is not true. We even bought new outfits to fully match the ‘elegant chic’ dress code which states firmly no jeans, t-shirts, trainers etc. There was a large group of men seated near us wearing hoodies, jeans, graphic t-shirts etc and it just ruined the atmosphere when the whole point is for it to be immersive, its part of what you’re paying for. We felt silly with how dressed up we were.

The live music was a singer and a pianist, don’t get me wrong they were AMAZING, but they did two just under half hour sets with a half hour break between (we were there 8-10, the live music was on 8:30-9, 9:30-10) so if you were only there for an hour and a half you’d probably only catch 30 mins of music, Not a biggie, but could do with this being mentioned rather than it seeming like there’s music all night, as we were confused when there was no live music for the first half an hour of our seating… but they add an ENTERTAINMENT CHARGE onto the bill? We spent £250 for two people in total so it just felt like an insult to get extra charges on the bill after the experience we had, i’ve never been somewhere with live music that put an extra charge on.

The waiter was nice but again, didn’t make us feel special and it wasn’t a very personal experience, he didn’t speak to us much and the menu etc wasn’t explained to us, it felt like it was very rushed.

We also ordered an extra dish just after our starter however this was forgotten/ not put through.

The cheapest bottles of wine we could find was around £100 on the menu we were given, I don’t think we were given the actual normal wine list but considering the menu we had did have wine in it, we didn’t want to ask ‘sorry for you have cheaper wines?’ (checked the menu online after and could see there was a drinks menu with the normal priced wines, that we weren’t given…) so we decided to splash out and get a bottle of champagne, which we then had to pour ourselves all but once or twice (small gripe and usually this isn’t something we’d care about but this is branded as the type of place that would do that for you, especially when it’s over £100 a bottle).

We also were sat down for half an hour before we got our bottle with no music etc we just felt a little odd. the food was really good however.

At the end, before the bill the waiter left his personal phone on the table with his lockscreen as a QR code and asked us to leave a positive review as they’re having a ‘competition’. This is in a venue that flat out tells you no photography on your phones etc, and that it’s supposed to be like stepping back in time, and yet the waiter is leaving his phone on the table and asking us to scan a QR code and leave a good review?

When we went to leave there was nobody on the front desk to get my partners jacket back from the cloakroom, luckily the lovely bartender eventually realised we were waiting and came to help, and when we explained our experience to him he also took us over to the bar to try some limoncello before we left, the extra star is for him.

It’s not like stepping back in time when people are taking pictures, people are in band t-shirts and jeans, and the waiter is asking you to scan a QR code on his phone.

While the experience genuinely wasn’t awful, as i said we did really love the food and music when it was on, for £250 on our anniversary it just saddened us that it wasn’t what it was sold as, we could have gone to so many other places and had a great anniversary, it was a really big day for us and we can’t get that day back, or afford to...

We dined at Louis for the first time on Friday and unfortunately after a much anticipated trip we came away feeling disappointed. We arrived and were shown to the bar to wait where we bought 2 cocktails which were very expensive but expected. We were shown to our table which was 10 minutes late (not a big deal) however given a table which was at the other end of the restaurant where we couldn’t really see the band. The door to the kitchen was also behind me and so unfortunately we had waiters continually going past in close proximity (they tripped over my foot a couple of times) and it was drafty to say the least. We asked if it was possible to be moved however were told it wasn’t due to them being fully booked which is understandable but a shame.

We ordered starters which were ok - however the focaccia is not enough for 2 as it states. We were only part way through the starter when our mains came out and there was no question of whether we would like it then or not, it was just put on our table anyway. We both got the Rigatoni Alla Vodka and unfortunately it seemed that it had been sat under a heat lamp (it had come out extremely quickly) and the pasta was hard on top. I mentioned this to the waitress, I did say I’ll deal with it however there was no offer at all to take it back and get me a fresh one. Aside from the hardness the pasta was ok however nothing incredible.

As we were sat talking we took our time with the food. My friend was done however I wasn’t and was just having a moment to talk when the waitress came over and started to take our plates. I had to tell her I wasn’t finished yet so she would leave it but it wasn’t confirmed we were done before taking them away and I hadn’t put my knife and fork together and had half a plate left so it wasn’t clear that I was done. We then spent the rest of the night feeling pressured to buy drinks by the waitress continually asking if we wanted more without calling her over when we were sipping the drinks we currently had. We then got the bill and were shocked to see an almost £10 charge for an entertainment fee. I asked the waitress what it was for and she said the music and the table (which in my opinion if the restaurant wants to provide music then it is for them to pay for it, we didn’t ask for the music and we also couldn’t even see most of the band anyway). The bill was as expected expensive with 2 glasses of house Chardonnay costing £35.

I will say the decor is lovely, the barmen were very nice (with one of the barmen going out of his way to get us Parmesan because it was never offered to us even though that wasn’t his job), and the waiter with the stretchers in his ears really uplifted the mood and was friendly and was the reason we stopped for another drink. Overall though it was unfortunately an expensive and disappointing visit. Hopefully as time goes on and they’re open for longer it won’t be as bad but it seemed a live...