Manna's Food Express — Restaurant in Waterloo

68 MINUTES TO PREPARE 2 Items. Tl;dr : An absolute shithousery of service and wait times is abysmally worse. DO NOT GO THEIR TO DINE IN, you might get food much later than someone who would've ordered online.

I decided unfortunately to go to dine in after reading all the good comments and decided to spend my date night here. (My FAULT)

Walked in at 8.58 PM, Completed my order by 9.10 PM because there were 4 delivery drivers in line before me. (should have understood then).

Sat down waiting for my name to be called out. I counted 12 deliveries that went in that time frame out. I sat down in and waited. I ordered 3 things out of which one was a pop. My table was messy and had to ask for a napkin to wipe down my table but the moment a group of people came in to dine in, the front staff immediately went to their table to wipe down and sanitize their table.

Went to the FOH for an update twice (at 9.40 and 10.05) and both the times was told "Just 5 more minutes"

Post 68 minutes of wait, I asked for a refund. I told FOH I do not want the food, you can keep it, I just want my refund as this is preposterous and then was told that the food will be ready in 5 minutes and was refused a refund as "It will be too complicated for the refund to be processed" and because the food will be ready. I denied to take the food and asked for a refund, as I just did not want the food now. But was pushed to take the food, no refund and guess what the food had chicken bits in it! Ohh and also guess what it did not have, A SINGLE BIT OR EVEN A PIECE OF PANEER! I ordered a PANEER Palnadu Biryani, Got something entirely different with chicken bit in it.

Opened up the food once I got home, asked for a vegetarian Paneer Palnadu and got Chicken instead. 68 minutes to cook and even post that I deal with this. I would have rather ordered from ANYWHERE else from the comfort of my home and gotten the food faster and made right!

All I wanted was a fairly decent time and some good biryani, and here I am with neither of those and out of money.

PLEASE DO NOT GO TO DINE IN AS YOU WOULD NOT BE ATTENDED TO AND WILL BE MADE TO WAIT FOR YOUR FOOD FOR GOD KNOWS HOW LONG. Just accept the fact that they would rather Deliver food you. So essentially you will be stepping into a wannabe Ghost Kitchen trying to be an actual restaurant which is complimented by the fact that they do not have actual dishes with them and will give you a take out container to eat food in and or a paper plate if you ask for it. Crazy!

Do not have an option of Zero Stars. But you guys have failed on all aspects that is required for any restaurant to be called a restaurant.

Experience - ZERO Food -...

A genuine review, whatever the staff member's right name is Saidu i guess as she refused to tell the name when asked to post a review. Its female front counter staff. She does not know how to provide customer service. A girl with a big attitude, woah hold on you are here to take orders properly. If you cant listen to the customer atleast double check. I asked for manager- i get a reply they are not here then staff talks rudely good service. Its over when you serve a non-veg dish when asked for veg. Just teach your staff how to understand and take orders and talk politely. Btw good luck.

Also i would like to add something after my review was posted. I am editing my old review and would like to ask how is manchurian dosa made, i got dosa without manchurian balls just manchurian sauce, moreover this order was replaced after long struggle and attitude faced by your staff member when i was said there is nothing they can do about it, and it is our(customer) mistake. Also it was said that you just have chicken manchurian dosa on the menu there is no option for veg after they gave me wrong order, does that girl even know about the menu you have?. Here is not the end we all went home consumed some food and found that masala dosa was stale, potatoes were tasting bad for which we had to go back again from home to just complain, common man already wasted 2 hours came in at 10:20 had dinner at 12, and what we get in return that is refund for only masala dosa.

Also i would recommend owner or manager to provide their contact details to staff as it was said to us that they dont have any means of contact to manager or owner.

I dont know how are people saying Manna is amazing but when my personal experience after spending $50 above was worst. I would like the whole refund as this whole thing messed up my almost 2 hours and the food we all consumed was cold. I hope if i would even wish to try manna again i would get good food, but if i wanted to try atleast not for ages.

Atleast Kudos to Chettinad chicken dosa it was good to eat although consumed cold. Had something to eat at late night after wasting 2 hours of time and 50 dollars.

All the best to customers and who recommend it i was not satisfied with...

I was a regular for this restaurant for almost a whole year, for both in-person pickup and through DoorDash. One of the employees even recognized me after a certain point. I even introduced friends and family to them. I would've rated them 5/5 for their food until today's order.

The Butter Chicken my roommate and I received today was extremely salty. Not just slightly saltier than normal - I mean that it quite literally tasted like we ate a spoonful of salt. This is not an exaggeration. We tried diluting it by mixing a bit of water or milk, and it barely did anything. This was not a matter of taste preference - it was straight up inedible.

When contacting Manna's, they took no initiative to try and make it right. I had to call in a second time to just ask if I could come in person and have it remade, which they agreed to. (This is the only reason why I gave 2 stars instead of 1.)

I brought my two orders in with me and made the trip to get the new batch. It was not as salty, but still quite salty. I decided not to push it any further. There was also no additional customer service for me having made the trip to come get something.

Also, when I picked up the remade Butter Chicken, they asked for my two orders to bring to the back. I initially assumed they were going to taste it to see how bad it was, but looking back, I actually wonder if they were perhaps just scooping the chicken from the salty batch and mixing it in with the new batch, since some parts of the new batch were also very salty. This is definitely just speculation on my part, but I mention this just to illustrate just how much faith they lost from me.

Really not impressed, and they just lost...