Revolución de Cuba Nottingham — Restaurant in Nottingham

This was my favourite restaurant/bar, I even celebrated my last years birthday here. So I was very excited to return on the 31st Oct a week before this November national lockdown. The cocktails & food was as lovely as usual, I really enjoyed all that I ordered. The waiting staff who served us appeared friendly & patient as she was wearing a mask so had to repeat what she was saying as it was hard to hear her. The waiting staff who served our drinks wore a viser so we had no issues hearing her clearly even with the low music & other customers speaking loudly in the background. Maybe it's better for all waiting staff to just wear visers instead of masks so customers can hear what they are saying better, especially those with hearing issues.

Although we were informed of all the rules & procedures on entering the building via the manager, she was accepting & still welcoming of us although my friend & myself are exempt from wearing masks. Unfortunately this understanding & consideration did not extend to all of her members of staff, including one member of staff who blocked our path right in front of the entrance/exit doors of the restaurant floor as we was making our way out, she stood in front of us & shouted at us in close proximity not 2 meters away telling us to put masks on 3 times without giving us a chance to reply to her first 2 demands. Their was zero consideration for the fact that we don't have masks & are exempt from wearing them. I informed her we are exempt as soon as I could & nicely suggested that she shouldn't be prejudice & should have just asked if we have masks or if we're exempt first, instead of shouting in our faces as she did... This member of staff ignored this & continued to harass us/wanting to argue as we managed to get by her to exit the restaurant & as we walked away out of the building she stood by the main entrance/exit outside the restaurant floor near to the manager & other customers who were entering the restaurant shouting very loudly at us that what she should do is her job, repetitively a few times. We heard her but thought she was being very unprofessional & immature so we didn't show acknowledgement or respond to her volatile outburst. I'm too mature in my mid-thirties to be getting into altercations with unprofessional staff who want to bully or argue with their customers. I am not aware if the manager had words with that member of staff on her unprofessional behaviour or if she condoned it.

I do wish to return & be able to have full good experiences their again without any discrimination for being exempt from wearing a mask. I wish that they retrain the staff to ask customers they see standing up without a mask on, if they have a mask? first, that then allows for those who do have one to reply yes & then be asked politely by the staff for them to put their mask on & for those who don't have one to be able to let the staff know that they are exempt. This is a non discriminative way of approaching such an issue & is much more professional & better mannered than just shouting in customers faces to put a mask on, with assuming that everyone can wear one when certain people just can't. Without the staffs no questioning approach of shouting in customers faces demanding they put on masks. I would have given 5 stars.

Throughout this Covid-19 situation I have not experienced such issues before in any other restaurant/bar, pub or shopping store, etc. I wish that this restaurant follows their equality & diversity policies & procedures which are actually backed up by the Human Rights Act which is a Judicial Law when incorporating these NOT Judicial Law Covid-19 changing rules like other places are doing. As before this restaurant never showed discrimination towards those with obvious or hidden health conditons & disabilities (most who are now exempt from wearing masks). They've even supported me with mine in various ways on past visits. Now I'll ring in advance to check that they are no longer being discriminative towards their customers in any way for any reason before...

AVOID AVOID!!! Only giving 1 star because one the servers Maria deserves some acknowledgement. Visited here in August for a friend's birthday. She wanted to try the Bottomless Brunch. We had booked a table for three and had to preorder our Brunch online before hand. Arriving we were told we were to go to the upstairs bar, we were seated on a small tall round table with high stools, not really ideal or enough room for three people having drinks and food.

The brunch is for 1½hrs.

After twenty minutes we were still waiting to place our first drinks order, then when we did we waited another ten minutes before the sever returned to ask us for our drinks order! to which my friend explained we had already placed it with them, and that we were here for a bottomless brunch for a set time and we had already gone into 25 minutes without any food or drink. The server dissappeared not to be seen again. It seemed the whole of the upstairs setting was in complete meltdown. Other tables we spoke to were waiting for drinks or food they had ordered. I went downstairs and spoke to the manager who to be fair was helpful and understanding he sent staff upstairs immediately to pull things together. The waitress we ended up with (I believe her name was Maria), was wonderful and straight on getting everything back on track. The manager came upstairs himself to check that everything was running smoothly. We asked if we could move off the small table and be reseated and we were. We started to receive drinks but had to give our food order again, and to be honest when it arrived it wasn't exactly delicious I was slightly disappointed.

The manager ended up extending our booking for another hour & hr because the first hour was a total disaster. Unfortunately the bartender serving upstairs seemed to have a terrible attitude problem and was stomping (and I mean stomping) about bring drinks banging them down on to our table - maybe drinks weren't being served before hand because she wasn't doing her job I don't know but it seemed like she wasn't happy doing what she was doing. I definitely think that job wasn't for her due to when serving paying customers you should be friendly, polite and smile this girl did non of them, just a terrible attitude behaviour like a stroppy teenager.

Towards the end of our booking time we were advised by our waitress that the manager would be refunding our payments (because that's another thing when booking you first have to place a deposit which is understandable, but 3 days before your actual booking date you have to pay the full balance? Never known of having to do this anywhere before) well we were told as an apology we would be receiving a full refund within 2-3 days. I wasn't sure whether this would happen and asked if this could be checked if we were genuinely being offered a refund. Again we were told yes 100% we would be getting a refund, the manager would be processing the refund. So, we are now at the end of October and the refund was never returned to my card as promised. I've phone the venue 4 times you can't actually speak to anyone. You are given options and when picking the speak with a manager it goes to an answer machine. Each time I've left a brief message my name and number and NEVER received a call back. I even emailed head office and I'm totally disgusted after informing them of one of there venues nobody had the decency to reply to me. Shocking customer care coming from a head office!!!

So even if it's not the Bottomless Brunch (which I would totally AVOID ) even if it's day drinks and food I would completely avoid this place! Felt very let down for a first time visit and fobbed off with a fake offer of a refund.

update received comment below to email with my Contact details, which I did and surprise surprise no one contacted me!! So again just being fobbed off, offering...

Where do I begin....poor service ...poor management...all glitz and no substance at this establishment. They don't follow policy and the staff are untrained as is Mathew the so called manager of five years. My friend and I were ignored by staff for half an hour while all tables around received food and drinks. I had to get up to ask for drinks and complained we hadn't been seen by anyone . They took our starters order and said they would get our drinks and take the mains order. The drinks were dropped of by a drinks waiter. An hour later after many requests the starters had not arrived and the mains order not taken. No apologies. I asked for the manager..when he finally came he didn't apologise and did not offer a solution just excuses and accusations of we weren't willing to pay. What I had said to my friend is when the service is so bad we should not be charged and compensated for our time (I have worked in hospitality and customer service for thirty years). On this basis which is lawful which the manager agreed he weirdly refused to bring our starters even after over an hour of waiting. Through the conversation the Asian customers next to us expressed they felt that this establishment treats black and Asian guests differently from European guests. Both of our parties were ignored and slow service or no device compared to the other guests. In the end when we mentioned this to the manager he used this as an excuse to tell us to leave aggressively rather than turn this awful situation around. At this point the cold starters arrived. In the middle of the complaint a waitress came over and ordered us to leave. They even got the door men to escort us out of the building not even allowing us to finish our drink. Both parties are disgusted and will be making a full complaint in writing to both head office and outside complaints companies. They were more concerned with other guests hearing our complaints than dealing with the complaint and viewing us as valuable customers which clearly we arent. They treated us like second class citizens and if this isn't blatant racism I don't know what is. They said they were pris eletting Therethe aduN guests stay because they had a £60 bill to pay despite the fact the reasons for asking us to leave was the fact we felt prejudice treatment. This place is it concerned about profit not customer service or what is ethical. proof also to show how they treat bookings with British names and those with ethnic names...asking for a huge deposit to secure a simple booking. I will never go there again and will advise everyone I know not to either. They broke laws and simple simple customer service procedures. In my 46 years I have never experienced such humiliation mistreatment and bad customer service from an establishment...