Cafe Kisimul — Restaurant in Scotland

Abysmal service. Phoned in a takeaway order 2 hours in advance. When we came to pick it up we were told they had ran out of some of the orders so they had just swapped them for something else, no apology and no options, just take it or leave it. They know they have a pretty captive audience on Barra. One of us didn't like what his meal had been swapped for, they refused to make anything else but gave him his meal half price. We paid and confirmed our meals with them and headed out, only to find when we sat down to eat that several meals and sides were missing. Went back out in the rain for what we assumed was just a forgotten bag if food. We were told to come back in an hour and a half for the rest as they were too busy. Very poor service but we didn't complain and did so. When we came back for the meals we were told off by the chef for not calling in the order earlier. By this time it 9pm, we originally tried to order at 5:30 and they opened at 5 and they had said the earliest we could get our food was 8pm. On top of all of this they refused to give us the sides that had been missed off the order. Saying that double portions of pakoras had been put in single boxes! The portion of the side was a normal size and certainly not double. Even if you were going to do that you should let people know!

Unapologetically bad service. If you accept an order and take customers money you should provide what they paid for. What should have been a lovely meal for 8 people celebrating the end of their trip ended up giving us all a really disappointing evening. The curry we did get was fine, not amazing or poor. The rice was microwaved and in barely warm clumps.

Would not recommend at all. Probably the worst service I've ever had.

EDIT - To reply to the owners response. None of the things you accused us of were actually true. Even if they were it hardly makes up for not giving us the meals we paid for. It's ok to say no if you are too busy/under staffed. It's not ok to take money then blame the customer for ordering food from you. We ordered main meals for 8 people and 1 person ordered a side (which she paid for but never received, not even hours later when some of the missed meals in our order were finally made) We did not all pay separately, I think 3 or 4 payments were made for the 8 meals and the staff member taking the payments didn't have an issue with it.

Thanks for confirming the attitude of your establishment though. There was no chance of any of us returning...

The setting was nice and to be honest my curry was really quite good but that's where the good experience stopped, while we waited for our food another table left due to lack of service (they were not even given the chance to order food) it's not like it's a big place, then a similar problem to us the table next to us wanted desert but then they didn't have many of the listed options and then only one flavour of the advitised four ice cream flavours to boot. I have side tracked though; so I have been to the toilet and when I come back my wife is has ordered the pasta but the waiter is informing her that they have no pasta, what no pasta in a restaurant that serves Italian food! She could have chips or rice instead with the sauce, at this stage i would have paid for the drinks and left but my wife is a more understanding person, so she has the chips. Now this wasn't the end of the world you say, it is on an island, supplies can't be constant I understand but wait there are more shops plus a great hunking co-op just round the corner, surely the staff could have gone got some pasta. There in lies another problem the staff, while friendly seemed at best incompetent with no seeming clue as to how to serve customer's and then completely unaware of how to sovle a simple problem as running out of pasta, then when the bill came no offer of discount or even apologises for chips with flippin pasta sauce. It was dire. Then as I'm leaving I noticed under the coffee machine, if it's ever been wiped under there is im surprised. I'm not inclined to leave reviews but seriously, I know we're on an island but some common sense and good customer relations would be most welcome here and if this is some ones resturant please have a look. What could have been good, ended up really not so good. I know I'm going contrary to popular review here but seriously this place needs some serious rethought to...

Went with a friend in August, straight off the ferry and looking for some dinner before we pitched our tents in the campsite. Initially thinking we'd need to get takeaway (the restaurant is very small, and the few outdoor tables are not covered, which is a bit odd for anywhere in Scotland, let alone the Western Isles), we were fortunate enough to be able to get a table due to a booking not showing up.

The servers were universally very friendly and accommodating, and our starters (scallops and crab cake) arrived promptly and were delicious. However, we noticed that it seemed to be taking an unusually long time for our mains to arrive. We figured that we were perhaps not really used to "island time" (things do tend to move at a more leisurely pace in the Hebrides, I find), so we politely didn't say anything.

After the best part of an hour nursing our first drinks, a waiter came up to us and asked if we wanted more drinks or a dessert, and they'd need the table relatively soon for the next booking; we were confused and said we'd not had our mains yet. They were very polite about it and accepted full responsibility for the mess-up, and even very kindly volunteered to cook our mains immediately and give them to us gratis as a takeaway (realistically, we had few other means of getting fed after 19:00 in Barra), in addition to taking our drinks off the bill as a gesture of goodwill, so we paid only for our starters. When I finally managed to eat my monkfish masala it...