Bonghy Bo — Restaurant in Bath

Wish I could give this Appallingly bad meal in bath city centre today 0 stars! We were downright SHOCKED at the state of our food. Anyone searching for authentic, delicious Asian food, DO NOT come here.

To start with, we waited 25 minutes to be approached by a waiter. When they finally came, we ordered their lunch deal and a couple of larger items. We then proceeded to wait even longer for a single dish to be served. However the dish itself was even more shocking than it’s service.

Starting off with the lunch deal, we payed £13.95 for 2 chicken skewers the size of a pinky finger- no exaggeration. It was then followed by a measly portion of “Thai green curry”. However, this was nothing of the sort. It was a sickly green with soggy fried chicken lumped on top. It then took a further half an hour to receive our rice. The chicken was extremely mushy, fatty and tasted like the off cuts of an aged bird. The batter on this chicken was tasteless, soggy and there was far too much of it considering the chicken content. Finally, the vegetables in this “curry”/ warm milk were over cooked (not to mention the portion being fit for a garden gnome)

The second set of dishes we ordered were even worse than the first. The 4 spring rolls, also pinky sized, tasted straight out of a freezer although they were probably the best food we ordered. Finally, our pad Thai arrived after around 40 minutes after we had ordered it. It was topped with some pathetic, droopy “edible” flowers and two undercooked prawns in an attempt to hide the minuscule portion of noodles beneath it. We were sad to see that this same chicken as seen in the curry was also lumped onto our “pad Thai” in an unappetising display. We finally dug into the noodles only to be met with a soggy limp texture and an overpowering chilli sauce that tasted nothing like that of a real pad Thai. This strangely contained mushy courgettes and broccoli which is unheard of in any real Thai restaurant.

In my three years living in bath I’ve never had a meal this disappointing and over priced. (The food we described in this review came to a total of £33 without service included.)Do not follow these false 5 Star reviews which are only there due to customers being offered free macarons in return for their positive reviews.

In summary, NEVER visit Bonghy Bo unless you’re craving a disgusting, unauthentic and...

Saturday 15th July

Four of us were on a day trip to Bath and were looking forward to having a meal before leaving for home. We all love Asian food – 2 of the ladies were Asian as well. One of our table was vegetarian. This restaurant turned out to be a big disappointment with underwhelming food and service. We arrived to an empty restaurant and had our order taken fairly promptly. We had ordered two Nasi Gorengs – one arrived and we waited for the rest of the order to arrive. My friend heard the lady on the table behind say that she hadn’t ordered Halloumi (on reflection we realised that must have been our order!) so that was taken back to the kitchen. After about 15/20 minutes of my friend receiving her meal we asked where the rest of the order was. The waiter went back t the kitchen and they had obviously messed the whole order up and given it to other tables. He came back and said we could cancel the order if we wished as they hadn’t even started! We said we just wanted to eat as one person had had their meal. Order was put in again. Next came my Nasi Goreng, a few minutes later another dish and even later came the last dish, Between my friend finishing her meal and the last one receiving it was about 40 minutes. At no time did any of the staff and there were enough, notice that only one person out of four was eating on our table. Certainly a lack of training there.

We made it quite clear that it was unacceptable for the amount of time we had to wait and the way in which it was served. To add insult to injury both myself and my friend agreed that the Nasi Goreng was nothing to write home about, quite tasteless. Yes we ate it because we were hungry and couldn’t face another wait. Thankfully the other two enjoyed their meal but we all agreed that the portions of meat within the dish were extremely mean – 4 very small thin slices of chicken in the Nasi Goreng. The manager needs some training in Customer Service skills – despite the problems we had he offered to take off the service charge. Really! I said that I would have taken it off anyway as there was no service. If you want people coming back and to write about you, the least you can do would be to offer a dessert, coffee or soft drink without charge.

I had intended to write this review before now so he knew who was making this review, but became too busy.

One...

I hate to leave a negative review, but I wish I had paid more attention to the critical reviews of this restaurant. We visited based on positive reviews (which we subsequently found out that the restaurant incentivises customers to leave - against Google’s terms of service), and so I wanted to share our experience as it was hugely disappointing and we felt completely ripped off. We visited in February 2024.

We paid £24.95 for the “Bonghy Bo Platter” for two people, and it was the smallest, saddest looking little plate of food. When one imagines a “platter”, priced at £25, one would expect a more generous serving. We were shocked when we were served a very modest plate (side plate sized) containing 10 small items (2 chicken satay, 2 prawn toasts, 2 tempura prawns, 2 vegetable spring rolls and 2 pork dumplings). Each item was small - one mouthful. Whilst the food was pleasant enough, it wasn’t anything exceptional by any means, and the feeling of being ripped off by the ridiculous price for this tiny, mean-sized “platter” left an unpleasant taste in the mouth.

After we ordered, we saw a sign on the table offering “free macarons” if you write a Google or TripAdvisor review - but only if show the review to your waiter before you pay. This practice is against Google’s terms of service, for good reason - it’s manipulating people into provide a good review by offering a freebie, because who would write a bad review when they have to show their waiter to get a free macaron? I’ve uploaded a photo of the sign which was on our table. I would probably not have bothered leaving a negative review (we would have just felt it was a rip off and never gone back), but when I saw they did this, I felt the practice is so dishonest and manipulative that I didn’t want others to have the same poor experience we have had. There are many other far better establishments to eat in Bath that are cheaper, with better food, and that don’t manipulate their Google reviews with these practices. I would really encourage the restaurant management to make customers happy through improving what they offer - then they wouldn’t need to induce their customers into leaving positive reviews, as they will do this of their own accord. The positive I would say is the waiting staff were friendly, no...