The last time I left a negative review for a restaurant was over 7 years ago. I recently had an infuriating experience with Nouri’s chef/owner Ivan Brehm and manager Matthew Chan. Everything I say is verifiable as, according to Mr. Brehm, phone calls to his restaurant are recorded.

I'm new to Singapore. Saturday was my wife’s birthday and I wanted to take her and my 4-year old daughter to a nice restaurant to celebrate. I’m not familiar with the restaurant scene here. Nouri was on a list of top restaurants I found on Google. It was the only one that had an opening ‪at 7pm on Saturday‬ when I called on Friday noontime. On the phone I specifically stated that we will be a party of 3 people but we will be ordering 2 set menus as our daughter can share our food. The person who took our reservation said that’s fine. He didn’t mention the cancellation policy on the phone and the email asking for my credit card information didn’t state it either; it was, however, included at the bottom of the confirmation email after I provided my credit card information. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time. Their policy requires diners to cancel their reservation by ‪6pm‬ the day before the booking to avoid being charged a cancellation fee. A few hours after I made the reservation I realized that we may not be able to make it to the restaurant due to logistic issues. I sent the restaurant an email canceling the reservation ‪at around 7pm‬. I also spoke to someone to cancel the reservation right after sending the email. That person did not mention a cancellation fee...if he did, I would have found a way to keep the reservation. I missed the cancellation deadline by just a hour, gave the restaurant a 24 hour notice nonetheless, and was not informed about any fee when I called to cancel so naturally I thought Nouri didn’t have a cancellation fee or just waived it. I realize a few hours later that Nouri charged me a SG$233 cancellation fee (SG$66+17% x 3 people). I was perplexed about being charged a cancellation fee for 3 people when I told them already that we would be ordering 2 set menus. Also, why were a 10% service charge and a 7% value-added tax applied to cancellation fees? There was neither any service nor any value-add. I was annoyed at this point. I felt like I should have been informed about the cancellation fee when I called to cancel. Also, any other restaurant would have waived the cancellation fee since I missed the cutoff by only a hour and gave a 24 hour notice. Anyway, I got in touch with Nouri on Saturday to dispute the cancellation fee. I told Matthew that we would like either a refund of the cancellation fee or our original reservation back...we still wanted to try Nouri and would change our evening schedule to make the reservation. He told me that he would not refund the cancellation fee and that our table was already booked by another party. Then Matthew said something that really bothered me - he said that as a courtesy and favor to us, he would let us use the cancellation fee toward another booking in the future. I felt irritated immediately - as a courtesy and favor to us you’d let us spend more money at your restaurant after you basically stole SG$233 from us? It’s not like we were no-shows...we gave you a 24 hour notice and you filled our spot with another reservation so you suffered no revenue loss as a result of our cancellation. I felt insulted after getting robbed in broad daylight. We were perfectly willing to revisit Nouri in the future before Matthew put a gun to our head and called it doing us a favor. Do you really think I want to pay SG$200-300 per person to suffer your customer service? I got agitated fast and asked to speak to the chef. Much to my shock, when he got on the phone, Mr. Brehm defended his policy and reiterated that he would not offer us a refund...he really believes that he was doing us a favor by allowing us to use the cancellation fee toward a future visit. I tried to explain to him how his policy is not good customer service. No one would want to spend more money on top of the cancellation fee after being treated this way. Who would enjoy his food under these circumstances? He suffered no revenue loss and we would have revisited Nouri on another occasion anyway without his “coercion.” Even more inexplicable, Mr. Brehm defended charging us cancellation fee on 3 people. If we had gone to Nouri we would have ordered only 2 set menus like we indicated at the time of making the reservation...how do you justify charging us 3 cancellations fees? Clearly, Mr. Brehm did not care if we went to his restaurant to claim the cancellation fee...if we went back he earns even more revenue and if we didn’t he gets to keep our cancellation fee as pure profit. The more he insisted on his policy the more it struck me as deeply unfair.

We’ve lived in Seoul, Boston, NYC, and HK for many years and have never dealt with this type of customer service at any establishment. We are new to Singapore, but surely this is not how diners are treated at other restaurants here. I have no problem with cancellation fees per se but Nouri’s policy was designed with a possible intent to defraud or take advantage of customers.

Finally I told Mr. Brehm that I would never visit his restaurant. I refuse to be forced to spend more money at his restaurant. I won’t enjoy dining there even if it’s free. I told him that I will dispute the cancellation fee with my credit card company. I also told him that I will factually put our interaction online for others to judge, at which point he said that he would release a recording of our conversation...I guess he thought it would embarrass me because I lost my temper during the call. Before this, he didn't disclose to me that phone calls to his restaurant are recorded. Setting aside the potential legal issues with recording and releasing private conversations without consent, I'm actually glad that he recorded our conversation.

We will file complaints with the appropriate consumer protection agencies in Singapore. In addition, we will consider our legal options. This is not about money...this is about Mr. Brehm’s unscrupulous business practices and horrid customer service.