Rakkas in City of London

The Rakkas restaurant has recently reopened and is a spectacular renovation !The restaurant is split into two parts. Firstly a restaurant and secondly a Shisha lounge.The restaurant does let the place down hence the 4 stars. The service is not great, some waitresses deliberately ignore you when you need something. The house wine - I would not recommend either.The level of service in the Shisha lounge is so much better you feel like you’ve walked into somewhere new. Waiters are lovely and personable. They kept my wine glass topped up. The experience is amazing with the entertainment of a live saxophone player, fire breather and excellently selected music.I would come again for sure.

One of the best shisha lounges I've ever been to!!! I felt like I was in Dubai. Great service in particular from Ahret. As with all the staff he really went out of his way to make us feel welcome. He took great care of us, and ensured that the service was prompt. To top it off there was a great fire show and a magnificent magician performance. 5 STARS. Will definitely come back again! Absolutely brilliant time.

The food and the atmosphere was 10/10 but the little girls at the reception was absolutely rude management need to pattern them up and tell them to crack a smile, even the security guards were very kind. Also shout out to Sarah for greeting us very well well done to herPS: shout out to Ahret (the best worker) ❤️

Absolutely amazing!Always seen this place but never attended until my friends birthday gathering.Amazing atmosphere and amazing staff.Sarah was our waitress and she was more than efficient and hospitable!!Lovely dancer and shisha lounge in the back- hopefully next time I could visit the shisha, very long queue for shish but moves quickly !!

Looks incredible!! Rakkas has been around for a long long time and I've never had the balls to go and visit in the past. They closed for refurbishment around lockdown time and I thought they'd closed down for good but how wrong I was! They are back with a bang and wow, the aesthetics are eye popping. Everything looks and feels luxe right from when you are greeted by security and enter through the doors.I visited the shisha area for a quick local smoke and I am honestly so impressed with the decor. One of the best looking lounges I've ever seen.I ordered African Queen which came in a crisp looming Savacco pipe. I enjoyed the smoke but the flavour and clouds were light.Service was friendly, attentive and I loved the little touch of servers greeting us and introducing themselves. This, to me, is so so important because if I want to be a regular customer, I want to recognise people and call them by their name rather than "excuse me" so thumbs up!My friend and I ordered a kinder bueno milkshake each which came in double walled glasses and and the shakes were thicc and smoooooth AF. I rarely finish milkshakes but this, I had to.Will definitely be back to check out the restaurant and will dress up this time to look the part

It was my first time here tonight and I had high hopes after the refurb. The service was so so slow, our food was forgotten multiple times, my friends food was delivered wrong (we didn’t say anything after because we had waited so long for food in the first place). We asked for coal change several times and they never came, we barely got time to smoke our shisha until the waiter came and handed us the bill which implied he wanted us to leave. Before leaving my friend wanted to quickly finish of the shisha, as she approached it the waiter grabbed it and took it away - we were shocked we didn’t pay service charge and certainly won’t be back.We understand there is a need for tables, but if the service wasn’t so slow we’d have had enough time to smoke shisha and also eat our dinner + the waiter also laughed at me when I couldn’t pronounce the name of the food off the menu as Turkish is not my mother tongue which we found inconsiderate.

This place doesn’t even deserve 1 star, me and my friends thought we would try it as it’s nearby. Everything was going well until we waited over 25mins for our food (we were told we would have a 20min wait). Our food came and my friend got the wrong starter and main, the lamb chops I ordered was over cooked. My friend ordered a starter and couldn’t pronounce it and the waiter laughed it off. The shisha that we got was the worse smoke I’ve ever had, we smoked it for literally 15mins, I asked for them to turn my shisha on after we ate and the smoke never came out properly and when the coal died I kept asking for coal and the waiter said “yeah sure I’ll do it” and it never came 1 hour later we eventually got it 5minutes before we were asked to leave!! I almost felt as if they did this on purpose so that we would get annoyed and leave.We paid for our food and we were having one last smoke of what was left and the waiter took it away quickly. No one mentioned there was a time limit and the waiter came over with our bill very rudely and asked us to leave when there were tables that had been there before us and still here.We told the waiter we were not going to pay service charge and we didn’t even get a sorry and he didn’t even look concerned. From the moment we arrived everything went wrong I definitely won’t be back and I think you can spend your money elsewhere.

Great food, cocktails and shisha. Particularly great service from our waiter Mert. He made sure our visit was good and paid attention. Did not feel rushed or anything and food, drinks and shisha came out very promptly. Will definitely visit again as it is now my new favourite spot

Only just refurbished and opened up.On that note barely had much choices on the menu, anything we asked for they didn't have with the excuse we've just opened up and haven't got the stock, which is disappointing because if you've just opened up you should've had everything stocked. On that note limited choices.Food borderline average, drinks below average, desserts not great-especially with the prices they're charging, should be much better quality. However shisha was very good.Service/staff excellent.Especially our waiter Hussein.

Rakkas has been a favourite of mine for a long time, so when they teased us with concept images for their refurb I was a bit sceptical it won’t look anything like that. How wrong I was this lounge has been completely transformed from top to bottom that you would have to go back to my old review and see how it was then and how it is now. First things first we were greeted by a staff member who took us to the lounge at the back. Sat down scanned the QR code and decided to go with something simple so ordered frozen blueberry and frozen raspberry. Shisha arrived in around 5-7 minutes, which was very quick in an xquisitesmoke stick hookah. Flavour popped very nicely and the clouds were pretty thick. The seating was comfortable and the vibe was spot on, plenty of live entertainment on the night. Service was spot on we even had the manager come over and have a chat with us as well as all customers which is nice, I hope this high level of service continues. Lounge as mentioned before completely different you can tell they went all out and is defo quite bougie, there are screens in the middle so you can imagine fight night will be a vibe. Although on the bougie side I’m glad prices were decent premiums at £28 including chaos tobacco flavours with the standard pipe or if you are feeling even bougie go for the table top shisha with lights etc for £55. Overall very happy with my visit and will defo return again and recommend to you all.