The Fat Buddha Berkhamsted — Restaurant in Dacorum

We have been to this restaurant several times, with other friends and just the two of us and it has always been good. However, on Saturday night (30th March) our experience was not one we would wish to repeat and I felt the response, when we made our complaint, was just batted away. We arrived at 7:15, our booked time and were quickly shown to our table. We ordered drinks, poppadoms and perused the menu. We then ordered our starters and mains. Our starters arrived, we ate them. Although it must be said that my wife's starter contained chillies, to which she is allergic, even though there was no mention on the menu. it was then 40 minutes before I could speak to our waiter to find out where our mains were. We were told they "were on their way". They arrived about 5 minutes later. Again, whilst nice my wife's had chillies in it and both had an excess of ghee, which made the dishes greasy. We quickly ate the meals as we had a taxi booked for 9pm (thinking 1hr45m would be long enough). We had to delay the taxi by 15minutes as we waited for the bill. At nearly £100 for 2 people is fine, if the service is commensurate with that price tag. We have eaten at some the finest Indian restaurants in this country, most recently Vivek Singh's Cinnamon Kitchen, and the reason for my low rating is that the experience didn't marry up with the cost. Finally, and it's a point the owners might like to consider, when we told some friends of our experience, they said "they won't care because they're in Berkhamsted and they have a...

Went there with a few old college friends based on the rave reviews. Well, I was amazed because our experience was not the same as those lovely reviews. We weren’t welcomed into the restaurant. Had to tell them we were here and had booked. Waited up to an hour for our food. While other people around us who came in after guys were being served. Complained to the manager about how long it’s taking for our food whose response was that it was the chefs fault and it will be out very shortly. 2 of the dishes, jalfrezi and madras were exactly the same except for the onions in the jalfrezi. Got the bill, complained about the above to the waiter which fell on deaf ears smiling away stating that all the reviews for the restaurant are really good.

There was no attempt to try and swing our mindset like in most restaurants if you’re not happy. A simple offer of a drink or a discount might have helped ease the disappointing night, but nothing.

Terrible service, bland food, not listening to the customer.

I for one will not be going back and neither will my friends and family.

Good luck Fat Buddha because...

I found the setting and ambience to be better than the service or the quality of the food. Unfortunately when it came to the service we were given the wrong starter, the wrong wine and the wrong water. The mojito served tasted more like a mocktail. We were also not offered any complimentary drinks, wet wipes or mints which is normally standard practice when dining out in an Indian restaurant. The food was sub standard. Only the award winning chetinand lamb was to our satisfaction. Maybe they should shift their focus to the other dishes also. Not to mention there was only 6 bite sized pieces of chicken in our Buddha chicken curry. Our bill came to just short of £100 for two people and that's after sending one of the starters back which was the paneer as it was like eating rubber. Definetely will not be returning as this is obviously a case of style...