Apollo Banana Leaf Review

Second bad experience at the Apollo Banala Leaf, Tooting. You can see the link at the end of this post about the previous review following a poor service. This time, (a few months ago) we went there after booking a table for 6.

When we arrived at the restaurant, there was only a couple eating. We had ordered the starters and the drinks. Usually, when we go to restaurant as a family, we first have the starters and order the food only after /nearly finishing with the starters (I am sure a lot of people do the same). It wasn't even 10 minutes of ordering the food, when the phone rang and the staff was taking a booking for a table of 7-10 or something. He immediately came to us and said; 'I have 10 white people coming to eat soon, you need to order your main now. Because when they're here, I won't be able to service you properly'. Note, by this time we didn't even get our starters or drinks to the table and it had only been 10 mins in the restaurant. We were also a group of customers who booked table in advance. Plus if you have a restaurant with a certain amount of capacity, then you must be able to serve all table equally. Doesn't matter white/pink/brown/black/purple!! If you can't, simply don't take the bookings. If a restaurant cannot serve 16 people at a time, you should probably close down or get more staff. Or more conveniently, put a sign outside 'We only serve certain colours'. No offence to any race here. If you go to an English restaurant, you're well treated there than an Asian restaurant. What an irony. There is  no need to rush other customers away when you don't even have a nearly full restaurant at the time. 

We were very disappointed by this and decided to leave the restaurant straight away. Family was being polite and said we had to go but I actually explained to the staff that this was not the right attitude. They are not very welcoming towards Asian people for whatever reason. Extremely disappointed. Please do not go there if you are an Asian and want to be treated decently.

We will never ever go there again.

Previous review:

http://ssaranyas.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/apollo-banana-leaf-tooting.html

Apollo Banana Leaf Tooting

We had been to this restaurant today as a family to celebrate a birthday. We were the only Sri Lankan/asian family in the restaurant at that time. Food was good, but the way they treated was not so acceptable. We were only half way through the main course and the waitress lady who was serving us brought the bill to our table and left without saying a word. All of us were absolutely shocked as if she had done this purposely and wanted us to leave… We hadn't even asked for the bill. We had no idea how to react. We spent about 15 mins trying to get her attention to our table and when she eventually decided to come to us, we asked why she did that (hoping that she did it by mistake for a different table), but more shockingly, all she said was "oh it's okay if you wanted to eat more". Thats all. We were not even half way through eating.Totally an ignorant answer to our question and not even an apology. We stopped eating and left the restaurant straight away (of course we paid our bill)....and she didn't even try to ask or explain why that had happened. Not sure why the waitress lady was that rude but.... we are never going there again. The birthday was ruined.
This sort of attitude is not acceptable and if they are targeting customers other than asians for an ?!?"authentically" asian restaurant, I cannot help laugh.
Good luck Banana Leaf Tooting, thanks for your poor service.

Note - this post relates to incident happened almost 6 months ago. And I do not think this restaurant is now any different to what it was before.

Update - Tried once more to eat here with similar experience. Reported to the staff too. Not sure how serious they take these.