Msala Ministry Indian Bar & Dining — Restaurant in Bristol

Lovely helpful staff in a lovely looking venue. The food portion sizes are brilliant.

If you're looking for heat/fire/extreme spiciness, then this venue for you. However, for anyone who prefers mild dishes for whatever reasons, then alas, I can not recommend this venue. The mild Kora dishes disappointingly came with an unexpected heat kick, so compromising the overall balance of flavours in the chicken korma dish. The infusions of mild sweet aromatic layers of flavours in the korma sauce and chicken were sadly lost for those who had the korma.

The same goes for the mango chunty with an unexpected heat/chilli kick when we all expect tangy fruity & sweet flavours as a contrast to heat. Some of the 'plain' poppadoms weren't plain either. The considerate waiting staff did bring some fruity yoghurt for one person in our group who was really struggling after trying the mango chutney. Subsequently, the guest started experiencing mild IBS as a result. The coconut nan looked promising yet again lacked balanced in flavour, too, compared to other local indian venues. It seems the food was expensive considering the questionable quality of the kormas, etc.

This inviting venue is alas, not air conditioned. This makes for an uncomfortable dining experience whatever you're located inside, especially in humid/heat wave/summer weather. The restaurant windows seem to have no way of being opened, nor were any fan being used or being considered or any air flow for guests and staff.

We were really looking forward to the experience, sadly I think for two in our party it'll be our only visit. The staff attentiveness was fairly good...

The restaurant managed to seat us, a party of 2 at very little notice on a Saturday evening. Staff were attentive and smiley and obviously wanted to show that they cared . Decor was nice especially the function room at the back. I was bemused by the wheel lighting, was this meant to depict the wheel of the India flag (contradictory to the fact that this is a Punjabi restaurant with Punjabi murals), or was it purely decorative down to the designers taste? Moving on to the food, this is where I think improvements need to be made. Chicken dansakh- consisted of 5 small cubes of chicken in a thick lentil gravy. 5 cubes of chicken - let's call this maybe half or a third of a chicken breast does not constitute a main meal at £13. It's actually quite appalling. Coming from Leicester, I've had thousands of Indian meals out so I'm not a novice. Second party ordered a main and a naan bread. Food arrived with 2 naan bread and when questioned told that the chicken tandoori came with a naan bread. Obviously this was an oversight on the other parties side in that they didn't spot this on the menu, but the waitress could've just mentioned it that their main already included a naan and did they want another in addition. It was clear who was having what. The rice that I ordered didn't arrive until over 5 minutes after my "main" dhansak and that's because I had to remind them. All in all , nice restaurant and staff with room for improvement. Food taste good though I've had better; value for money - not at all and for this reason I wouldn't recommend this place until they...

My partner and I were very keen to try this place as we had heard good things. Unfortunately our experience wasn’t the best. Although it was a Friday night, and particularly busy the service was extremely poor. We waited over 40 minutes before we were served any drinks, or had our food order taken. We were going to leave. The food took a while to come out, we weren’t asked if we wanted the main and starter at the same time but they were both bought out together (in hindsight this turned out to be a good thing as I would have been waiting a while for my main), the curry I ordered was missing. My partner ended up eating on his own, we shared a rice so when my food eventually came out the rice was cold and I was also eating on my own. By this point we were quite fed up and wanted to leave quite promptly so proceeded to ask for the bill, which also took a while to get to us. We tried to pay and discuss our concerns on three occasions where we felt we were dismissed. Eventually we went up to the bar area to pay, as we noticed quite a few other people doing the same. We were slightly disappointed when reviewing at our bill we weren’t offered any money off due to the service and our order being taken down wrong, we had to ask for it. Although the food was nice, the service absolutely...