Zeera By The Bay — Restaurant in Pickering

Recommended by a friend so we went for a celebration dinner since we love Indian food and love discovering new places.

I was greeted pleasantly by a younger woman and shown to a 2-top table against a wall in the main traffic aisle with a great round metal piece mounted to the wall (not recommended if you should go since this is where everyone walks in or out or to deliver food and it's right next to the washrooms). It took some time to get a pint of Cheetah dark beer (yum!), but I was not in a hurry as I waited for my husband to arrive. The rest of the evening, the service (or non-service) is our biggest complaint.

Ordered samosas specifically with tamarind and mint chutney, since the menu only stated they were drizzled with a chutney. Got samosas, over-cooked and brown, not golden. There was oil on the bottom of the plate which was also a turn-off. Served with no chutney, no napkin, cutlery or mini-plates. An older lady came by, noticed the plates and cutlery missing, hissed at another woman to bring them to the table and went on about her business. It took flagging down someone to finally get this settled. The samosas were full of sliced potato but didn't have much flavour and I was disappointed in the overcooked pastry. Would not order them again.

Read on Yelp that the tandoori fish was great. We wanted to try a variety so we ordered the Zeera Special platter for $17.95. It comes with tandoori chicken, garlic prawns (we only got one), chicken tikka and the fish, too. Agree that the tandoori fish is done perfectly (moist, flakey, flavorful) and is the best thing I tried (hubby doesn't eat cooked fish).

Also ordered the Lamb Roganjosh for $12.95. Good sauce with about 9 cubes of meat, but not enough.

Those of you who need to avoid seeds (Diverticulosis or other reasons) be advised: we ordered the plain basmati rice and naan and both were riddled with seeds., not noted in the menu The naan was really good.

Trying to get anything from the servers was difficult at best. Even worse, it was rude. The older man, who was an owner, was talking with us at our table about our desire to wrap up our food to take home and actually stopped and walked away while I was speaking to take care of men who'd walked in the door. Another table had complained about their meal and were trying to leave as they had a 3-year old who was getting antsy. My husband told me later that he'd had to get up and line up at the bar with this woman just to pay the bill. It took forever, and when they ran out of paper for the cash register they made him wait while the woman went home to get more paper.

All in all, we spent quite a bit of money for not a great experience. Worst of all, I got sick afterwards. I can't claim it's from here. Regardless, I associate it...

Not up to quality standards!

We ordered a few dishes for dinner through the Uber Eats app and have to say the quality and portion size was not acceptable. They also forgot to include the garlic naan we paid $3.99 for...

First off, the chicken in all the dishes was clearly not fresh, it was fiberous, flavourless and somehow dry inside even though it was cooked in sauce. It appears the dishes were left over from the lunch orders earlier in the day. I'm sure the owner will reply to this review and say "We never serve reheated chicken!" but that would just make it even worse, as then would indicate they don't know how to cook chicken at all lol.

Anyways, the tandoori chicken was... well I'm not sure what it was exactly, as I couldn't recognize which part of the bird they were from! It looked like each piece was part spine, neck or something, and the flavor was suspect, smelled off, not like fresh tandoori, again likely just reheated from lunch...my girlfriend refused to take a chance of eating it. I ate it but it had the consitence of rubber/plastic almost like cartilage but it was meat, and the meat I did manage to pick off was barely edible! So I would avoid this dish for sure.

The other dishes, vindaloo, saag and channa we not as flavourful as we have had elsewhere. Seemed like it hadn't been simmered long enough with the spices to create the depth that the dish was supposed to have and consistency was a little watery.

Also the containers looked a lot like other containers that restaurants serve but just in slightly smaller size. I guess everyone is cutting corners "because of covid".

All in all we will not be ordering from here again, and advising our friends.There's lots of other great indian restaurants to choose from...

We hosted a party there yesterday. I would tell anyone that is Indian to not go here. I feel as through the owner is ashamed of the Indian community and tends to take care of all his customers which are not Indian. The staff was so rude to all our guests and also us the hosts. We did pay quite a bit of money for the food and service however, the food was ok but service was so poor from the beginning. They made us pay for kids under 2 full price because they "might" break something. All the servers had massive attitude towards all of us. The only reason this place has 2 stars from me is because the food was decent. Definitely never will go back here. Even the napkins we got were the cheap ones yet all the other guest which were not Indian had the nicer fabric napkins!? At the end he made us pay for 37 people when we counted 33. When we asked him about it he said he does honest work - we were just so fed up with our service that we end up paying. Then he asked us to pay him tip separate. No one even served us water and he told us we would have champagne on the house when we consulted with him but never got that either. HORRIBLE service, hire staff that is happy to help instead of people that are miserable with their jobs. Never coming back...