Hobson Indian Takeaways — Restaurant in Christchurch

I went to this restaurant when it was called Sai Tandoor. The food was great. It changed hands and was renamed Delhi 6. The food was great.

It has changed hands again, and is now called Hobson Indian.

I went there for a meal. They weren’t busy, but the food was very slow to come out.

Tasted OK, but the meal was mostly liquid and it had only a few small pieces of chicken in it. It was more like a curry slushie.

This is a trick many restaurants use on takeaways by cutting back on the meat and hoping the customer doesn’t complain because they are already home when they find out. But this was a dine in meal at Hobson Indian.

If this is the new standard of meals at Hobson Indian, I don’t think they will be in business very long as there are many other Indian restaurants to choose from where the meat portions are generous, and the customer doesn’t feel ‘ripped off’ like I did.

Tip for the owner: Put the price up by a dollar and put more meat in. If you think what you are serving is normal – go eat at some other Indian restaurants, and you will find out that your meals are sub standard.

In response to your reply to my review:

I do not think I should have to give details of when I ate at your restaurant and what my meal was. Just an attempt to identify me?! But I 100% stand by what I said, so I am not intimidated.

Thursday night. Chicken tikka masala (ordered hot by the way and it was medium). It was as described in my review.

I also ordered a butter chicken takeaway (ordered medium and it was medium) for my friend. And it was a liquid meal with little chicken, just like mine.

If what you say is correct and the chefs are the same as when Delhi 6 was operating, they have obviously been told to cook and serve less meat and put more liquid in.

In your reply to my review you stated, “the chefs are same. They do provide same quantity and quality food and we have no complaints.... everything is same”

Well let me tell you that your statement is not true, and I think you just made that up to sound good.

I have just read some of Hobson Indian recent reviews (which I hadn’t read when I posted my review last night) and there are other complaints similar to mine and some EXACTLY the same as mine.

If you were the person (owner) who was there on Thursday night, (and I was the only person in the restaurant), you spent much time in the kitchen so you would have at least seen what the chef was cooking, and it was a 100% “rip off” meal compared to what used to be...

I can't say it's bad, but it's not as good as when it was Dehli 6.

The hours on Google say they're open from 11 am to 9:30 pm, but it actually closes for who knows how long in the middle of the day (today it was closed at 2 pm and a few weeks ago I saw it closed around 4 pm).

When you used to order your curry mild from Delhi 6, it was actually mild. The food was very flavourful, but not burning your mouth with the flavour of chilli pepper. Now the food is hot even if you order it mild. I think you guys should be more upfront if you don't do mild anymore. If that option is still available when ordering, it should be actually mild, without chilly pepper.

Another thing I wish you were more honest about is the waiting time. With the previous owners 20-ish minutes was 20-ish minutes. Last time I ordered, I waited the usual 20 minutes and then heaps of time on top of that. It's quite frustrating to wait so long when you just popped to a local takeaway to grab dinner. If that's the norm now, I might as well go back to ordering from Uber Eats from other places.

On a different note, the chicken in the curries became more flavourful, which is a plus. I do agree with other comments on the reduced amount of the said checked, though.

I hope the new owners are just figuring things out and are going to improve, but if they don't I'll have to find some other spot to get...

I've been here a few times. It used to be amazing, and I'd rave about it to anyone who would listen, but the last few times, I've been disappointed. 1st reason is, as part of their Monday and Tuesday dinner specials, you get less then what you'd normally get in a tray, so instead of 1 tray of food and 1 tray of rice, you get 1/2 a tray of each, and they call that their discount deal. 2nd reason is last time I went, in my big tray of butter chicken, I had less than 10 pieces of chicken, the rest was just sauce, and the sauce was very watery. And my boyfriend had that same issue with his chicken Tikka masala (he had a little more chicken, but not much). 3rd reason is that usually, when you order, all curries with rice come with a FREE naan bread, but I didn't get my naan bread last time. And I'm very sad about it, as it is so close to where I live, and so it's convenient to walk there if there is a night where I don't feel...