Chaiiwala — Restaurant in Bolton

On the hunt for a good desi breakfast this morning and had tried the other Bolton Chaiiwala so decided to give the Deane Road outlet a go.

Red flags from the moment we got out of the car (parked in the car park round the back) and were hit by the smell of days old, many times used, cooking oil. To add to that, a rat ran OUT of the Chaiiwala kitchen (door opens into the car park).

Inside, the decor was decent enough but by now I was already thinking Chaiiwala is more style than substance.

Ordered the desi breakfast with channa, paratha and karak coffee. Went for all the extras for the omelette but could taste none of them. Cheese stringy but no flavour. The channa was very tasty, parathas were the ones you buy frozen then heat on tavva.

Also ordered the Bombay Toastie, which was delicious.

My karak coffee had a fruitfly in it but was swapped immediately and with no fuss.

All in all, I wish I’d listened to my gut instinct as soon as the smell of overused cooking oil hit, and not entered the shop.

Staff were pleasant.

Edit, 31 August, 2 weeks since my visit: I was asked to contact the Chaiiwala team, their response to my review. I have used the feedback form on the website and sent two messages on Facebook and no response. It would appear this goodwill ‘contact us’ gesture is just fluff, and no one is...

The restaurant itself is very modern, clean and professional; can't fault it at all for the décor. The menu is small but very well priced, and the food here is above average. You'd be better off going to Rice N Three opposite for a hearty meal, but if you're looking for a quick snack over Indian Tea, this is the place. Because it's opened very recently, the staff are a bit green, but obviously that will change with time, however they are very friendly and courteous. The order system is a bit strange, with the use of order numbers instead of table numbers and a dedicated takeaway queue. This ends up with the servers calling out the order numbers looking for responses and ends up with them taking your food on a tour of the restaurant to each table looking for the intended customer. My food was good, the Bombay sandwich was a bit underwhelming for what I thought and was more of a snack than a proper meal. The Indian Tea was pretty good, I got the normal Karak chai, which tasted great; no complaints there. Overall, great place, very clean, great staff and alright food. Would...

On Friday the 30th of November I visited chaiwala in Bolton for the first time with a group of friends. We arrived and ordered food at 11.00pm and the food was served at 11.15pm, chips were served at 11.20pm as these were ordered later.

At 11.25pm a member of staff approached us to remind us that the shop will be closing in 5 minutes, we assumed this was just to let us know in case we are thinking of ordering something else. 5 minutes later someone approached us again to tell us that they are now closing, at this point we were half way through our meal so assumed we will be allowed to finish, but unfortunately 5 minutes later we were told that we need to leave as they don't get paid for working overtime. We were appalled at the customer service and asked to speak to the manager who unfortunately was not available, so we left without finishing our food.

Overall our experience of chaiwala was very disappointing as we had heard alot about the company, the food was average at best so unfortunately we won't be...