"This is our local Indian restaurant which has a reputation for high end asian food. We have frequented it since it opened but now we feel it has dropped its ' standards largely through lack of staff training. I tried to book a table for 2 but the website wasn 't working. I rang at 10 a.m. The call was taken by a rather unprofessional individual who simply said Hello? It sounded as if I 'd woken him up! When we arrived at the restaurant we were shown to our table but no attempt was made to pull out my wife 's chair for her, so I did it whilst the waiter looked on. The table was sticky, indicative of not having been cleaned properly. Later in the evening we saw first hand that by way of cleaning, the tables were simply scraped with a crumb scraper rather than being disinfected. Cutlery was placed directly on the table nonetheless. We were handed very grubby menus. My wife 's was annotated in pen. We suspect it was for staff use. We ordered drinks immediately so that we could have a drink whilst we read the menus and made our choices. They did not arrive until the starters arrived more on the starters anon . My wife ordered a Bombay Sapphire gin and Fevertree Mediterranean Tonic. The drink finally arrived with all the tonic already added so we never saw the bottle, it could have been anything, and in any event my wife would normally only use half the tonic to avoid making the drink too diluted. For starters we ordered popadoms for one and some onion bhaji bites to share between us. We stipulated that we wanted them served at the same time for that purpose. 60 seconds later the waiter reappeared with the popadoms entreating us to be careful as the bowl was hot. I suggested that the bowl would be much cooler by the time the bhajis were ready and asked that he take them away and serve fresh popadoms with the bhajis as originally requested. The starters finally arrived together. The dips for the popadoms were very thin. Of the 3 bhaji bites 2 were undercooked and the third so undercooked as to be almost raw inside. I couldn 't eat it and asked for it to be taken away. The waiter returned to say that the chef had apologised so that 's alright then! . I suggested that a more meaningful gesture would be for us not be charged for the bhajis and indeed we were not. For her main course, my wife had the Goan Prawns. Whilst tasty, they were served in a vast sea of sauce which necessitated a trawl of the bowl to get the prawns out. I had Chicken Tikka Madras. Again, very tasty but to my mind the chicken had had only a brief relationship with the appropriate marinade and an even briefer flirtation with a tandoor. Nonetheless this variant attracted an additional charge. Throughout the meal there were no signs of attentiveness from the staff. Unused and empty glasses were not taken away without prompting and apart from the usual irritating is everything ok? , waiters and front of house staff walked by without ever casting a glance at our table to see if there was anything they could do to help. Finally, throughout the evening the waiter and the manager would refer to us as you guys . After this happened for the umpteenth time I collared the manager and told him that referring to diners in this manner might be appropriate in MacDonalds, but we didn 't care for it in a Bib Gourmand restaurant with high end pretensions. Quite incredibly, the manager had no idea what that accreditation meant, nor that the restaurant he was working in had one! Taken in isolation, you might think that our grumbles were minor. However, taken together in an establishment that used to pride itself in not being just another curry house, they are disappointing to say the least. On previous visits we have commented on the fact that asian people obviously rated the place and attended in numbers. Not so this time, there were only 16 diners in the restaurant at its peak which is not impressive on a Friday night. When we pay £75 for one and a half starters, two main courses and a couple of drinks each, we expect better."
Butter Chicken
