BOMBAY VELVET — Restaurant in Ontario

I rarely leave any bad reviews but this is an exception. NEVER VISITING THIS PLACE AGAIN...

Ambience wise it felt authentic and nice but has this old carpet smell. The servers were nice and welcoming. This is a Thursday night so there were only a few people dining in. Me and my partner decided to take the buffet option as it seemed reasonable for the price - only to realize that theres a catch when ordering the curries which made it the worse kind of concept when it comes to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

The server gave us a heads up that the portions are small for each order which is perfect because we can get to try many things. We decided to order 4 kinds of curries at first and a naan bread (for context we're mostly meat eaters and we like saucy meals but we usually just eat the meat. We ordered the naan so that we can dip it to the sauce which is what we usually do)

The place was playing some music at this time but it kept cutting out and got annoying so we requested if they could just stop it. They did end up fixing it at some point but it still kept cutting here and there. So far we're still okay and we are hungry after all.

There were two servers and less than half a dozen tables dining in (I think it was three or four table with 1-2 people sitting at each) yet it took them about fifteen minutes to serve the first order. We understand it can get busy but there really aren't any reason for it to be that long or at least they could have mentioned the wait times beforehand. Again still not an issue for us as there might be other reasons for the delay.

Finally the food came in. Four curries on a small plate and a naan bread. Naan bread was a good portion but as you see, the curries were mostly sauce with like 2-3 meat chunks in it. The flavor of the curries were good in general. But literally not enough meat to fill us up. We dipped the naan bread with the sauce but at some point we wanted more meat. So we ordered another batch of curries. This is where it went downhill. Another long wait and we got the new batch of curries to try with a biryani. The server did not pick up the old plates (maybe he thought we weren't done) so when he came back at some point, we asked him to remove them so we can have more space.

While eating we decided to just stack up the small plates on the side as we already ate the meat in them. Then a different server came up and asked us if we need a take out for the curries.

We got confused. There's only sauce in the plates... and then she casually brought up that THE SAUCE IS PART OF THE MEAL. YOU'LL BE CHARGE EXTRA AS THIS IS A LOT OF LEFTOVERS. At this point we had about 10 curries which again ONLY HAD 2-3 pieces of meat on them. She then mentioned that people would usually dip the curries with a naan or something else (which we did but one order of naan can barely scoop out all the sauce from a single serving of their curry. So if we follow their recommendation, we should only be ordering a couple of curries with a few orders of naan and eat mostly bread or rice- really defeats the purpose of an all you can eat to me.)

We asked how much extra would it be if we pay the curries and the server said around $1 dollar a plate - FOR THE SAUCE! They added that we could have asked for less sauce and this would have been avoided. But all orders are made on an iPad and they didn't give us this option or mentioned it when we chose the buffet.

At this point we have already ordered our third round of food but we were so annoyed that we lost our appetite. So we paid and left strikingly...

Every 5 star review for this restaurant astounds me and I have to assume they were paid for. Our experience was the worst service I’ve ever encountered to point we walked out and got a table at chucks roadhouse.

We arrived at 6:30 on a Friday evening. The restaurant was about 70% capacity. We were given 4 bottles of water for the table (room temperature). There were 6 adults and a 3 year old so I’m not sure why they were rationing water. I would have been fine with tap water like every other restaurant serves but I question if they even had glasses back there. When we asked for more water we got two more bottles but never got any refills after that. As for the food - we ordered off the iPad and it was straight forward l, however it did not say how many items would come in an order so we asked our server. They said 1 item and we ordered accordingly. We then found out that an order of the spring rolls were 5 per order and we had ordered 25 of them. Normally, this would not be a problem as an extra spring roll never goes amiss, however they were like warm on the outside and cold on the inside. I’m actually impressed with how they achieved this as it was still crispy like it had been deep fried recently. They looked and tasted a lot like packaged food from Costco. We also received about 10 chicken wings l and these were pretty good but also not overly warm. This was over the course of 1.5hrs. In that time we got our disappointing overorder of spring rolls and some warm chicken wings. We never got the majority of what we had ordered and when we looked around the room, it seemed like everyone was on this new diet plan with us. We had ordered rice and na’an (the two easiest things to prepare) and never got a sniff of them. The 3 year old at our table was obviously getting hungry and my friend had to leave the table to take his child to the convenience store down the street to get some bread so she had something to eat. After this debacle of a Friday evening dining experience we gave up, paid for the one beer one of us had ordered and moved on to Chuck’s Roadhouse where we got food in less than 30min. Now… I’m all for having a dining experience that lasts all evening and spending time with friends. However, you still need to bring out more than a couple appetizers in an hour and half! I was told all you can eat Indian food and we got the war zone ration pack instead. I really wish I could have seen what was going on in the kitchen because from the production we saw I wouldn’t be surprised if it consisted of a pallet of warm discount bottled water, a couple microwaves plugged into a sad electrical cable, and a card game that the ‘chefs’ were reluctant to leave in order to prep the Costco food.

I was so utterly disappointed in this restaurant that for the first time in my life, my friends and I walked out after telling the server that we had waited long enough. Unless major changes to the management of this establishment occur I would not bet on it lasting out the spring. Save yourself the time, let alone the money, and go to any...

I visited Bombay Velvet with a group of friends on June 20th with expectations of enjoying a pleasant dining experience — especially since I had previously visited and had a good time. Unfortunately, this visit turned out to be one of the worst dining experiences I've ever had.

We opted for their all-you-can-eat offering, expecting transparency, fairness, and the freedom to enjoy what was advertised. However, from the start, we were repeatedly cautioned not to order too much food to avoid "wastage" — a warning that felt more like pressure and judgment than a friendly reminder. Shockingly, several items we ordered never arrived, seemingly because the staff assumed we would forget or because they decided we had ordered "enough."

Even worse, when I specifically asked the server about the lunch hours, I was told it ran until night, leading us to believe we had time to continue dining. However, at 3:00 PM, we were abruptly informed that the all-you-can-eat had ended and that we could no longer place additional orders — a policy never communicated clearly at the start. After expressing our dissatisfaction, we were begrudgingly served a dessert, which did little to repair the overall experience.

While the servers were polite and the ambience decent, the food was average at best. The real issue lies with the management and kitchen policies, which feel manipulative and dishonest. It is unacceptable for a restaurant to advertise an all-you-can-eat option and then decide what the customer is “allowed” to consume.

This experience was not just disappointing — it felt exploitative and misleading. As a result, I will not be returning to Bombay Velvet, and I strongly discourage others from visiting until the management addresses these...