Havin Turkish Kitchen — Restaurant in St Albans

I will start off by saying I have ordered from Havin on a number of occasions and not had an issue with the food, but I needed to leave a review based on the last contact I had with them as honesty is important.

I am a celiac, so food preparation and dishes not mixing is very important for not making me sick. My wife and I decided we would have their new year's offer. I called up the morning of the day we were going to order and I asked if the food items that were not gluten free be labelled, he was a little dismissive and told me to remind him when I went to collect it. So I went with that.

Later that day my wife saw someone on social with the deal and all the food appeared to be in the same tray. So my wife called up and asked if we could have the meat put in different boxes due to my coeliac desease, he huffed at her down the phone and said "fine, I'll do that" in a very rude voice. I called up straight after to cancel my order explaining it to him, there was no apology and he was happy to just hang up.

Obviously having such a bad attitude towards customers is just unacceptable, and it also makes someone that has a dietary requirement that is not through choice feel pretty awful for asking for something like I did.

If you do not want to cater to people with allergy needs, it is best not to label what contains gluten and say to contact your server is you have any requirements on your website.

I will no longer eat from here, nor can I recommend it anymore. People with allergies, please...

We have just visited this new St Albans restaurant as we noticed it due to its prime location and it looked really well done from an interior design pov. There was a steady stream of customers with people arriving ad hoc for lunch to be told they were fully booked - the staff seemed to do all they could to welcome customers and get tables ready though. We got a table in the centre of the restaurant and it quickly became apparent that social distancing wasn't on the menu. However the food was tasty. We had starters and mains from the lunchtime set menu which was good value at around £10 for 2 courses. The dishes were enough to fill me up but the other half still felt hungry afterwards. I had a beetroot and walnut dip with accompanying flatbread then falafels on a bed of humous with salad. Some of the salad was past its best as it was starting to turn brown at the edges. The other half had a cucumber and yoghurty dip with flatbread along with a lamb kebab main with rice and salad. The food was good and we will probably be back to try more although I still personally prefer Bar Meze further up town for the fabulous friendly atmosphere and very...

We called the restaurant to advise them we were running 5/10 mins late due to traffic and parking. They said no problem. We arrived at 7.42 our booking was 7.30 and our table wasn’t even ready. We then had another 15 minute wait for our table as they didn’t want to ask other customers who had outstayed their welcome to leave our table. While waiting they gave us menus. While I was reading a menu a member of staff took it out my hand as they required it. They did return it but thought was strange that they couldn’t have just had 2 menus in the whole establishment. Finally we were seated. A drink we ordered unavailable. Great start. Cold meze arrived quickly. Mains however took a lot longer. Even though they were emptying out. Had to chase so many times gave up and eventually food arrived. Food was nice. Nice as a Turkish gets. No apologies for the wait, we mentioned poor service which was removed. Overall i expected better service as I’d heard great things about it but unfortunately didn’t love it as much as I’d hoped and won’t rush back for a...