Presqu’ile Cafe Indian Cuisine — Restaurant in Brighton

I originally sent this as a DM to the owners to try and be helpful, but they couldn’t even be arsed to respond. So I’m reposting it here to hopefully spare other customers their terrible food. Judging by the other recent unflattering reviews it’s star rating is only above one star because they kept the same name as the previous business.

Hi there. This is Andy the British guy who just picked up the Butter Chicken, Lamb Curry and vegetable samosas. When we ordered earlier this afternoon you asked us to give you feedback. I’m writing a private message rather than posting it on your FB page as the feedback is not at all complimentary and you’re a new business I’d like to see succeed. Frankly the meal was awful the Lamb dish was spectacularly bad. The lamb was essentially a bland watery stew with very few pieces of meat. While the seasoning of the butter chicken was better it was also swimming in a very watery sauce. If the food from the previous owner Ben was a 5 out of 5 I think I’d be very generous giving the food we just got a 1 out of 5. We’ve been eating Indian cuisine all over the world for over 40 years now, including Michelin star Indian restaurants, back street Indian restaurants in the east end of London (UK) and many here in Canada. I’ve never ever been served a dish with such a watery sauce. Obviously the food being ready for pick up an hour earlier than agreed didn’t help as we had to microwave it. But i don’t think that made too much difference to the final outcome. It almost seemed like your ‘chef’ hadn’t prepared enough sauce and had to water it down in an desperate attempt to stretch it out. The previous business you’re trading under had a loyal customer base here in Brighton who were very disappointed when Ben shut down his business. And I know people were excited to hear you guys were reopening the place “with improverised ideas”, but I suspect despite all that goodwill if the quality of the dishes your ‘chef’ prepares doesn’t drastically improve you’ll lose them. I’m sorry to be so negative and believe me i’d much prefer to be praising the quality of the food we just ate - but then I’d be lying. I hope this is in someway helpful and I really don’t intend to be mean, in fact if you hadn’t specifically asked for feedback when we ordered I wouldn’t have bothered and just never ordered...

I'm Indian and apologize to those people who think this is authentic. It came out of a 15L white plastic bucket. It's a pre-made butter chicken sauce that he used and added to both the Tikka Masala and the Saag Paneer (if I ordered Butter Chicken, he would have just added cream to the sauce base).

Saag paneer is not made with the same base as Tikka masala, so the fact that my saag paneer came out with a red tinge is not authentic. I also saw him open a can of saag (pureed spinach and greens). So there's nothing being made from scratch.

The sauce base is good, however, you can find the same sauce base down any Indian aisle of a grocery store. So paying a premium for this isn't fair to the consumer.

Finally, they didn't have samosa, so he suggested pakora. Pakora is vegetables or meats coated in chickpea batter and deep fried. This is very obviously left over breakfast hash that is loosely coated and fried. Besides not being pakora, it was also mushy, greasy and tasted of stale oil.

I read the article proudly displayed on the bulletin board, but I don't see anything truly authentic in what Mr. Chopra has made. Not only is it just reheated, it's lazily constructed.

Understandably, he doesn't get the traffic needed for fresh food and a lot probably goes to waste or has to be repurposed. But visit any of the hundreds of Indian style fast food joints in Brampton, Mississauga or Scarborough, or just across thr street at County Flame and you can see there are better ways to make fast food fresh...

Didn't expect the quality level & welcoming attitudes of authentic Indian Restaurants but even with my low expectations this place fell quite short of being close to a decent place to eat Indian food. The owner became upset when I returned an oily palak paneer that looked nothing like the photo in the menu. My wife's eggplant dish & my daughter's butter chicken had at least 1/4 " of oil on the surface. One would expect a customer oriented attitude and a reasonable response to our complaint but the reaction left us rather disappointed & offended. I won't go into detail about the decor & disregard for service. Needless to say there's room in Brighton for an authentic Indian Restaurant operated in the true essence of the culture....