Banu Indian Restaurant — Restaurant in Birmingham

I visited the restaurant with a Groupon deal. I don’t think the restaurant gets the idea of Groupon. As far as I can see from a retailers point of view it’s a way of enticing people through the door giving them an opportunity to impress guests and so get return trade. From booking the table onwards I got complaints about how Groupon takes all the profit. Are you trying to make guests feel guilty? Why offer Groupons if you feel this way?

The staff were friendly and generally front of house was clean though perhaps showed some odd taste in decoration: specifically a varnished, part finished wooden plank with bark on one side hanging on the wall.

We were initially shown the wrong menu for a less expensive Groupon offer, which happens. The impression given though was that we were going to try to get away with the minimum they could.

The food was fine but nothing special. Missing was the chicken pakora promised in the offer. They also went out of their way to make clear we couldn’t have any choice. I think if you are showing off what you offer then it makes sense to have the better menu items or offer some choice, otherwise the dishes may not be to people’s liking and they won’t return defeating the point of the Groupon from the merchant's point of view.

I also became aware that they insisted children order a full adult size meal and not a smaller portion which I can’t say is a child friendly approach. Perhaps they wanted to claw more money back from the evil Groupon corporation.

Between starters and mains they insisted we keep our used cutlery on the table rather than give us fresh cutlery with our main. This is just poor. It makes such a bad impression as you watch the table cloth slowly soak up food remnants, and it is such a little thing to replace them. Why give this bad impression?

The final insult was that the Groupon clearly said ice cream AND coffee were included, but we were only given the option of one or the other. I asked the waiter if he was sure and he insisted. At this point I hadn’t the arguey to argue, though I had a printout of the offer in my pocket.

Final scores:

Cleanliness/decor 4/5

Service speed and quality 3/5

Food 3.5/5

Kid friendly 2/5

Overall 3/5

Sadly this visit gave me no reason to want to return. The merchant needs to decide if they want to offer Groupons, and if they do they need to use them...

The restaurant over charged me by £100, and when I asked for them to refund me the £100 they said “we can’t do it until my brother is in at 12:00 tomorrow to bank transfer you” which sounded dodgy to me. So when I asked for cash in that case they said that they can give me cash but I had to give it back the next day and they will transfer me the money back again so that they didn’t pay VAT on the first transaction. When they arrived at my house 45 minutes later the man tried to argue with me that I should wait for tomorrow to get a bank transfer from his brother and I told him no we agreed cash and he reluctantly pulled the cash out of his pocket and gave it to me. To add insult to injury the food was cold and not great to be honest. He had told me that I would receive the bank transfer by 12:00 the next day and that he would phone to arrange picking the cash back up. 12:00 came and went with no transfer, so I texted and called to chase this up to which I was told “it will be sometime this evening now, we will call you when we are outside”.

I told them no I’m not just going to sit in and wait for them to call me at whenever works for them as I have other things to do and he said that it is the only way and they will be coming this evening. I asked that since they have put me out so much that they should at least refund the full transaction including the price of my meal. This prompted him to start raising his voice down the phone at me and start insulting me with things like “so you’re this kind of guy then” etc.

When I told him I don’t appreciate him having a go at me when I’ve had to chase them down to sort this out he ended up eventually just hanging up on me.

Avoid this...

Me and my friends went to Banu Restaurant yesterday. Due to some of the reviews saying the food was blant, we were initially hesitant to try this place - but as it was one of the few indian restaurants located conveniantally to where we happened to be yesterday we decided to give it a go anyway. And we were glad we did!

The food tasted brilliant!! So we were a bit baffled by the poor reviews on the taste of the food. Maybe the restaurant had taken previous feedback on board and improved their food. But either way, One of my friends ordered meat and the rest of us mainly ordered veg or sea food and all of us enjoyed our food thoroughly.

The person serving us was very friendly, polite, patient and made an effort to understand what we like and don't like and made recommendations accordingly (which is what we went by. He did check in often enough and request made was catered to promptly (and without additional charge) Me and my friends agreed its rare to get this kind of customer service nowadays in most restaurants.

The place looked a little run down on the outside, but the inside was fine. However the manager did tell us they're in the process of renovating and soon they'll also have a grill place there.

So as we definitely will be going back there for food again, we look forward to seeing the new grill place at some point too.

Overall the 5 stars are for the finger licking food and the amazing customer service!

Highly...