New Ambala — Restaurant in England

Right, so I walked past this place and their Nihari offer caught my eye 👀. Nihari and 2 naans for £9. I thought in this cold weather that's a steal and worth trying. Usually the most tired looking places have the most authentic tastes. From my experience not every restaurant offers Nihari (like people do with Biryani which you find everywhere and it's so bad). So if they're advertising Nihari surely it couldn't be that bad.

We step in, and the place is relatively quiet, really tired looking and it did make me question my choice. But even with the deco being incredibly dated, the table and seat was clean and I was still trying to keep an open mind and remember never judge a book by its cover.

Immediately, the staff are all super approachable/welcoming and not the typical attitude to servicing customers like you expect from any other Asian place where it feels like you're an inconvenience and want to ask them for the bare minimum. The guys took my order with no issue, no need to repeat 3/4 times, just super helpful, super smooth ordering. With that, we later discovered the owner was also sat nearby and gave polite recommendations and exchange pleasantries.

Anyways, the food came, piping hot, and much to our surprise the food SLAPPEEDDD!!!! It was so good. It was served in authentic crockery that you'd find at your grandmother's home. It felt like you were in her house and I actually unwind and relaxed. We learnt this shop had been here 45 years! That's saying something. The food was so good we even stayed for proper Pakistani chai and dessert.

The shop has an abundance of sweets from mitahi to freshly baked biscuits where the owner gave us a couple to try for free. They made the chai fresh in a pot just for us.

The whole experience was so enjoyable, all the guys are really nice and also great value for money. The food was delicious fresh snd nostalgic. I'll definitely be back. My only recommendation is to slowly fix the decor bro. But...

Ddnt wanna leave a review but the guy at the counter left such a petty face that im going to. So I Ordered 6 samosas and asked for enough sauces. Worker gives me 4 sauces. I politely asked for two more and he reluctantly gives me two, mumbling on that they don't give that many sauces. So let's do the maths. If I ordered one samosa, I'd get one sauce at least, 6 samosas would mean 6 sauces at least. But the worker makes a dumb face over giving less sauces. Pure pettiness, that's all I can say.

So, thanks for responding (Mr Owner) but now I have to make it super clear as to why I left a review as you don’t realise the point which makes your apology to the situation pointless. Reviews are not always about the product itself, there is such thing as CUSTOMER SERVICE. Product is good, that’s why I still come to you :) My kids each want to have their own sauces with their samosas, however you, the owner expects two people to share one small pot of sauce between two then that maybe your world, but my world is the CUSTOMER’S WORLD and customer’s world is what you should be focusing on. if your employee doesn’t want to give the extra sauces, he could have politely declined, but he makes a weird face and goes on about ‘no one gives that many sauces’. This is the root cause of me having to leave a review which is about this particular treatment and as a customer I found it disappointing as I am a regular customer.

Don’t worry about turning this wrong into a right, as the owner you are good with your customer service skills but doesn’t necessarily mean your workers do. That’s where you can turn the wrong into a right, not just for me, but for everyone insha Allah.

I might have been harsh in my review but its the only way businesses can improve where they need to. No hard feelings and...

Ordered Gol Guppa along with normal pakora and fish pakora. I had a bit of the fish pakora and threw straight into bin they were freezing cold and tasted off, My wife then went onto try the fish pakora thinking I was being mellow dramatic but the same happened to her, She then returned to the store where to owner gave a full refund after weighing the items. They insisted my wife didn't like the food and there was noting wrong with their food. The pakora was freezing cold and had obviously been sat on the counter top for some time. As me and my wife had tried 1 fish pakora each and even though we threw you gave a full refund I have since given a small contribution in charity on behalf of the shop for the Pakora we tried each even though they were not to par. I wish you all the best for the future but we will never be returning...