Al Faisals — Restaurant in Birmingham

The service was terrible! No one came to take our drinks orders. Until we called some one over. This was around 15 minutes in. We had a table of 13. We finally got round to getting drinks orderd, then we had to wait again to get our food order taken! At least 20 minutes passed we were non the wiser you know just chatting and catching up until we though wait a minute.. nobody has came over to us.. Again! Then a waiter (if you can call the staff that here) finally payed our table some attention. (As a restaurant the customer should not have to keep looking for a waiter to call over to order food) Was not impressed. It get's worse. We wanted to order a cake (they do special birthday cakes like a slice of cake of your choice with a fountain candle thing) when I say the man came over 3 times. No lie 3 times. We told him we wanted to suprise our friend and he said okay took the order. Then 10 minutes later some other waiter came over talking about.. what cake did you want THIS ONE pointing at the blatant bold writing of happy birthday (cake) in the menu by this time our friend had saw and clicked on what was going on so the damn suprise was ruined. Very annoying. So just told them no thanks it doesn't matter. We requested the bill and oh my gosh. Just ridiculous.. he took money off people but separately as you when paying part card or cash. He didn't have a calculator to minus every deduction off the bill like hello how are you keeping track of the hundred and something bill. Then he had the cheek to say oh can you add it up for me? Do you have a calculator? You know to see if it's all payed off. We already did all of that prior with the calculator passing round the bill he just stood there taking money. At the end the day the staff need better training in one to one basic customer service skills. I would not go back there again. I do not recommend this restaurant at all. The food wasn't all that either. I know Asian friends that can cook better Asian food than what we ate. It was just standard like it was okay. One major plus side you can bring alcohol from outside (shop) they don't serve it strange but you...

The establishment was clean, spacious and the decor was above standard. Food: starters were excellent and they were big in portion. Also the salad was very good for a Pakistani/south Asian establishment. For mains lamb gosh was good. And the jalfrezi also was tasty. Disappointed with the chi saag. Deserts were standard nothing to show off about.

Service was very poor and it wasn’t even busy as we dined on a Monday. Granted the waiters were very young, but they were very rude. Not all mind you but enough to make this review. Example one, when we ordered drinks he gave us 2 wrong drinks out of 3 and just said we don’t serve coke or Pepsi after he gave us the drinks. He served us Pepsi max. The young waiter didn’t know the difference between chi tika jalfrezi and chi tika mosala. Just said we do king prawn jalfrezi. After a while we explained how he can change the king prawn to chi tika.

When we ordered the desert he didn’t give us the ice cream and said it doesn’t come with ice cream. We told him to read the menu and the manager said “oh some people do not want ice cream” but if it’s on the menu and we didn’t ask for a change, you give what’s been advertised. And when the bill was asked for the waiter slammed it on the table. We did leave closing time.

I think the manager should take more ownership and take orders as the staff are very young and inexperienced. But I do understand everyone has to learn.

I would actually return but now I know what to expect. As I enjoyed the starters and 2 out of 3 mains. Rice and nan were decent too. Ps they charged my mate twice!! So he’s going to call them for a...

From Hero to Zero in a decade. My last visit to Al Faisal's was over a decade ago when it was known as the Royal Al Faisal and was one of the best balti houses around. Revisiting for the first time since the late 90's, last night I experienced terrible service, terrible food and a terrible atmosphere. I had an Onion Bhaji starter which was nothing more than pieces of sliced onion which has been deep fried until burnt, this was followed by a Ginger Chicken Tawa which was served on a hot plate as expected but was clearly well over cooked and very burnt also. With both dishes the only flavours experienced were that of burnt overcooked food which were barely seasoned to even an amateur level. What was meant to be a mementos Birmingham curry experience was a disaster. At no point during the meal were we offered drinks, we asked for water twice and it didn't come until the 3rd time of asking. The decor could only be described as random with Saudi/Middle Eastern styled images of camels (??!!) on one wall, cricketers on another, and some particularly uninspiring modern art on another. I also noticed that Al Faisals is the only Indian restaurant where you can buy a commemorative teddy bear. All in all, terrible. I won't be returning and would instead recommend one of the more traditional balti houses...