Bad taste in my mouth

I called Cubana a few days before we planned to go (Saturday 15 July) to make a booking. I specifically asked the person I spoke to, what the minimum spend for a booth was, since I know they have a minimum spend condition. She said that there’s no minimum spend, I just have to book. I asked this woman 3 times about a minimum spend and she insisted that there isn’t since all I wanted was a nice comfy setting for me and my friends to have a good night.

When we arrived at Cubana, ofcourse, we were seated at a table and not a booth because we were given the wrong information during the booking process. I was told that the person I made the booking with was supposed to tell me to send an email…in the entirety of the call (mind you, I made 2 calls) the word “email” never crossed her lips or my ears. The manager then came to our table and proceeded to tell us “but the minimum spend to sit there is R15k”, his tone and the body language suggesting that we would not be able to afford that. He also showed us other areas to sit where the minimum spend is R8k (nothing special about these seats except that it is on a little pedestal about 2 steps above where the tables are) and we will not have to adhere to the minimum spend condition, we decided to take the seats.

We then ordered a platter for 6 which allows you to choose 6 of the basket items. The basket came and it looked a lot smaller than usual but I thought maybe they decided to cut down a bit. Halfway through the basket, we realised they had not included the ribs which we ordered, we then called the waitress over to tell her and she proceeded to make excuses. First she said that we can’t complain now because there’s no proof (ok lady, we must have swallowed the bones or put it in our bags all in our plot to rob Cubana of some ribs), then she said that sometimes they give boneless ribs (I guess they spin a wheel and decide who gets bones in their and who doesn’t). At no point did we tell this lady that we wanted anything for free or demanded and sort of refund or for them to give us the ribs we ordered. All we done was ordered another basket because, ofcourse, we were still hungry and as it turns out, they had chosen to exclude another item from our first basket which we would only discover once our second basket arrived. So, the second basket comes and before it even reaches the table we can immediately see that this is the “platter for 6” size that we usually order and everything that we ordered was in this 1. This is when we discovered that they had also excluded a wings basket from out previous platter. Again, we brought this to the attention of our waitress who again said but we didn’t say anything at the time etc (ok so we are at this high end place where there is a R15k minimum spend for the best seats in the house but you have to count your food like you do at a KFC drive through to make sure they don’t rip you off by holding back some wings, got it!). Anyway, my entire party’s appetites and moods were ruined at this point and we decided to put an end to this horrible experience there and then. We asked for the bill, lo and behold, we were charged for 2 platters for 6 even though the 1 was clearly a platter for 4. The items that were missing from our first basket amounted to R310, in my opinion this would have been a really nice tip for the waitress had she not met our concerns with such attitude and gaslighting. The first time we were “showed empathy” from this waitress was when it was time for us to pay. We decided not to tip because, and there’s no better way to say this, we were **********. She asked where her tip was and we told her to go sort it out with her manager (my sister had approached the manager when the first mistake in the food debacle was discovered and her concerns were met with utter contempt) and everyone else who treated us like we were not paying customers. Our booking was at 6pm so it wasn’t even full yet, they were not busy at all so (even though a crowded place should never be an excuse for bad service) they don’t even have “a busy night” to pin their ridiculous treatment of paying customers on. Needless to say, we’ll never go to this place again but I guess this isn’t a loss for them since we don’t look like the type of folk who can afford to spend R15k to sit on some couches