JAMAYA Bristol — Restaurant in Bristol

Avoid. Honestly one of the most chaotic, laughably bad dining experiences we’ve ever had.

We sat down at 7:30pm. No one approached us. We had to hunt down a drinks menu ourselves like it was some kind of scavenger hunt. Finally flagged someone down to order at 8pm, and then… nothing. Drinks took 50 minutes, including soft drinks. At one point we genuinely considered just walking out. We were told the bar was “busy” – but every time we looked over, staff were giggling and chatting like they were at pre-drinks, not on shift.

Ordered a 2-for-£12 cocktail deal – got charged full price and served what looked like orange squash in a basic glass. I’ve seen more effort in a cup of tap water in Wetherspoons.

Food? Ordered at the same time as drinks – started trickling out 2 HOURS later. One plate arrived. Then we waited another 25 minutes for the next, 10 minutes for the next all were cold because the heat lamps broke

The chicken tenders? Just sad chopped-up chicken breast. I showed the server the photo from the menu to check if they even were the same thing– even they laughed. Sent them back, and the replacements were the size of £1 coins and were no better.

The wrap was inedible – dry, cold chicken with unmelted cheese that looked like raw rice. Sent it back twice, came back exactly the same.

The skewers? Don’t bother. More like a cocktail stick with one sad piece of chicken and some veg.

Asked three times for the sauces that were supposed to come with the chicken – never arrived.

Complained – was offered a “drink on the house.” That also never showed up. We left before it could crawl to the table.

Now… to top it all off: we ordered three £9 mac & cheese - yes £9 and this is a side too not even a main meal price. Two arrived. The third? We were told the chefs had burned the cheese sauce and couldn’t make any more. This amazed me because the 2 that did arrive so say with the sauce were the dryer than the Sahara desert. At that point, after everything, we just burst out laughing. It honestly sent us over the edge – like a tragic final punchline to a night of pure chaos.

The bill? Had extra drinks we never ordered. Of course it did and the 3rd Mac and cheese that never showed up.

One waiter was actually okay – clearly mortified but professional, and shared a few laughs with us about how awful everything was. Props to him for surviving the shift. Would completely understand if the staffing problem and lack of staff would have been from the pure chaos from working there if I was a member of staff seeing the chaos from 1 random Thursday evening there's no way I'd be turning up for my next shift with all the complaints and cranky customers.

It's safe to say we did not pay for the full bill the cost of what it should have been with the level of service and food makes everything 10x more hilarious. Will not be returning ever even if it was free I wouldn't feed that to my worse enemy. I'd rather lick a bus stop.

This place might have potential, but with this level of disorganisation, poor service, and comedy kitchen errors, it’s hard to see it lasting more than a few months, actually weeks.

The only positives would be how nice the interior is and the laughter with other tables about how shocking it is. It's a shame the service and food let it down.

Food: 1/5 | Service: 1/5 | Atmosphere: 2/5 (for the shared laughter and trauma bonding with...

Disappointing first visit. We have been looking forward to this opening for a long time, sadly our first experience didn't meet our expectations. We were booked at 9pm on a Friday evening, restaurant wasn't busy at all, far from it, but we were told to sit and wait for table, no drinks were offered at all. Getting to our table, again no drink menu was available or offered, only food menu. We took a drink menu from another table. When placing our order the waitress seemed unaware that we'd like drinks...then informed me that many beverages were unavailable due to selling out, inc Red Stripe. Our food arrived in good time, however there seemed to be lots of confusion over our order, specifically the spice levels we had ordered, this was never resolved properly. Still no drinks btw. Food was good, tasty and plenty of it, drinks eventually turned up 5mins after our food arrived. One of our party had to ask twice for a condiment after this we were never checked on. After clearing we waited and waited for contact for more drinks/desserts etc it never came...we then requested the bill....this took over 10mins to arrive, and I state again, by this time the restaurant was empty, so no pressure on staff. When we left it appeared senior staff were sat chatting on the sofas..not a good appearance to clients. To summarise not a great first experience in this new restaurant, food, especially the jerk chicken was tasty. Service and experience was very poor. Hope this improves or the folks of Bristol won't support...

I am so disappointed by the lack of sympathy in some of the comments. First, they only open a few days ago, it is a NEW restaurant, NEW kitchen, NEW chefs, NEW staff. Anyone that has worked in a restaurant will understand: not knowing the table numbers, the food, stress, working in an open kitchen. Second, there was 50% off all the menu, expect one, in their opening week for a reason. I am flabbergasted that some failed to mention that they didn't pay full price on their food. We were there last night and it was full, including a few groups. We had to wait about 5 min for our table, another 20 for our drinks and 1h for our food, arrived at 19h left around 21h. Yes it was very chaotic, I felt sorry for the chef that kept calling service and no one would pick up the food. I felt sorry for the manager who was running like a headless chicken while some staff would be very nonchalant.There is a lot of room for improvement for sure, but it's a new team, they will need time to adjust. We had 241 cocktails, my Island Spice burger was absolutely lush and my friend cleaned her Jamrock Brown Stew. The food was delicious. 2 cocktails, 1 burger, 1 side of plantains, 1 stew for a total of £20. Not bad. I am giving 3 stars for the food and hope they will learn from their mistakes to improve. Good Luck to them, so many places are closing so it is a brave move to open a new restaurant. I will definitely come back to try the rest...