We had a terrible experience at Randhawas and won’t be heading there again. Hailing originally from India, we wanted to try Randhawas as it seemed it be a luxury fine dining restaurant. We had a tiresome day and went for dinner. While we didn’t have a booking, the lady at the reception was very courteous and we were seated within 5-10 minutes. We were initially enjoying the decor and ambience. We ordered Amritsar Fish which was decent and my husband ordered beers. We had asked for goat curry (Indian hot version) for mains and it arrived soon with the tandoori roti. At first we were delighted to see the curry was piping hot just as we like it and started enjoying the food (though the tandoori roti had ghee and we usually don’t prefer ghee - though we didn’t ask about it initially).

Soon to our dismay I found a piece of hair in my goat curry and quickly called the gentleman serving us. On showing him the hair, he kind of laughed at seeing the hair and just took away the goat curry without saying anything. We then waited for him to remove our plates. He came back after a while and then took away my plate but didn’t take away my husbands plate. Thereafter another lady working on level 1 came and replaced my plate with the cutlery. All this while my husband plate hadn’t been removed and the breads were going dry and we were let what was happening. We requested the gentleman who had served us to call the manager and were let waiting for much longer. Then we called another person serving tables if my husbands plate could at least be removed and be replaced with fresh plate. This was done though they didn’t bother to give him fresh cutlery. My husband politely asked the second person what would happen with the rotis as they had gone stonecold by now and this gentleman asked if he could microwave it for us!! We were appalled at the turn of events and requested again if we could please speak with the manager.

At first we were told our rotis or breads will be microwaved for us. We’ve never had microwaved rotis at home as these are always a had fresh in any Indian household. In the meantime the replaced goat curry arrived. White it was hot in terms of temperature this one wasn’t Indian hot as we had previously requested. We were growing tired of repeating ourselves so we didn’t mention anything about this. Thereafter the manager who was a lovely lady came and apologised to us and we told her we understood it wasn’t her fault, though we never expected this in a restaurant like Randhawas. She was really courteous and profusely apologised on behalf of the staff and asked if there was anything she could do.

My husband still didn’t have a spoon to have the curry and had to request for it separately. Our replaced roti soon arrived and the manager offered to order another round of roti for us. Soon after as the 1st floor starting getting a bit empty, we heard the staff arguing in the background. There was also a girl who was serving tables and had been scolded for not doing her job well and she kept dropping cutlery on the floor as she went around tables. She seemed least interested in customer service and was throwing around utensils in the bar area quite loudly. We were keen to finish our food and go back home as this was far from the fine dining experience we had been looking forward to. We went to the main reception to finalise our bill.

As a compensation the manager did not charge us for 1 tandoori roti and mentioned that while it takes 3 days for bio membership to be activated and one needs the card to avail the vip cost price, she would offer us the vip price on our bill for tonight (and that vip price is not always offered on all items but she would put it across for our bill). All in all we won’t be going back to Randhawas and felt while the decor and location were superb, the customer service simply let it down. The food portion size was quite decent and the manager seemed the only responsible lady in the staff and we felt sorry for her as she seemed hurried, rushed and overworked.