Amaya Express — Restaurant in Ottawa

Food was old and cooked from processed sauces that can be bought from Walmart.

Response to the owner #2: You want me to see how the food is cooked and then judge it. I see, here I thought you had to taste the food in order to judge it. You say that I have no concept of what I am talking about but as of now, there are 192 reviews for this "restaurant" and half are 1-STAR reviews. You are only picking a bone with me because I am one of the few who pointed out your mistakes. I saw other reviews and it is the same pattern in terms of the owner's responses. However, you are right about my time and money better spend elsewhere (half of the other reviewers seem to agree on that as well).

Response to the owner #1: I have visited Amaya 3 times now. I am not about to spend days sitting in the food court watching your service and process. Open kitchen concept doesn't mean the ingredients are made there as well. Most of food bought by the customers is already made. I would consider Thai Express to be an open kitchen concept. The food quality and taste tells me all there is to know about its process. It is not rocket science to understand if a sauce/curry was homemade or bought from the shelf and in Indian food, sauce can make/break your food quality. If you make a sauce/curry at 8AM and serve it till 8PM, that's not considered fresh. You are charging restaurant-like prices without matching the restaurant-like quality, then criticism will obviously follow. If you do want better ratings then please visit Coconut Lagoon or other authentic Indian restaurants and match your quality with theirs or drop your prices by...

This location is definitely not as good as the other ones. Initially, I was going to leave a review myself but seeing the way you reply to your customers (or in this case the customers you’ve lost) is not really professional. From one business owner to another, I think it’s crucial to handle constructive criticism. Your customers are taking their time to leave your restaurant a review based on YOUR service and YOUR staffs, the least you can do is stop getting defensive when customers have a “negative” opinion. This should be an opportunity to learn and maybe take their opinion into account (especially if more than one person are saying the same thing). For example, you can suggest a solution, apologize for their experience, or even compensate; not just agree and tell them to go other places. You don’t create customer loyalty this way and this is certainly not how you should be replying to customers when they have a complaint. As a business owner I think customer satisfaction is what makes businesses successful. Thus, let your staff know about the complaints and find ways to improve (whatever it is). You can't just be defensive towards customers that didn't like something about your restaurant or service because it's the customer that brings their money to you. Based on how you advise others people to go and eat at different places, I really hope that more and more people will take your advice and be loyal...

Let me just preface this by saying that it takes a lot for me to complain. I've occasionally gotten food from Amaya a few times without issues, but my last trip there was extremely disappointing. I hesitate to say it outright, but it was plain disgusting. I ordered a meat/veggie combo which included the butter chicken and saag paneer. I've ordered both of these before, from Amaya and other locations. But this time, the paneer tasted hard, old, rubbery, and not like cheese. I was so taken aback by this that I rinsed off the pieces that were left in my meal and as you can see by the picture... Well, those hard, orange pieces don't look like any paneer I've eaten before. To me, it seemed like they honestly put old paneer into the new curry which I hope not, but it was horrible. Even with spices, I've never had paneer taste or look like this did. Really disappointing, to say the least, as I loved the convenience of having an indian restaurant in the mall, but I can't see myself ordering from them...