Shalimar Gold — Restaurant in England

Absolutely shocking all round.

From start to finish, although we had booked weeks in advance for our party of 13, when we got there the restaurant staff were rude, confused, couldn’t communicate, and seemed to have no clue about our orders.

We were sat at the table, not even asked about drinks, then delivered poppadoms, some cold bits and pieces, not sure what they were they were disgusting. Five of our party were having English Christmas lunches, one a vegetarian.

The English Christmas dinners were very very odd, and they weren’t offered an English starter, just heaped in with the rest of us on Indian starters.

Our vegetarian member, I kid you not was served sprout curry! Unbelievable! The only plus on this visit was that the starters were hot and good and varied, as long as you like Indian. For the rest of us eating the Indian Christmas buffet, most of the dishes advertised were not available, and certainly not offered to us, we were simply offered lamb balti, chicken balti, chicken tikka masala all of which were very poor in flavouring. Also with rice, not much of this at all for everybody, and garlic naan which again wasn’t really enough to go round. No one was offered refills of the dishes to give people enough to eat, as we were for the last two years at the Viceroy just down the road! Just to point out this!

The English Christmas dinners, the only good thing about them was the turkey, the rest was made up of I kid you not, bubble and squeak style mashed potato, with some kind of sauce, and beetroot! I’m not joking.

We were then told that you could have a sweet or a coffee, one person asked for ric pudding which was offered, and the guy serving us even though the rest said no said oh I’ll bring rice for everybody then, which he did! Those ordering coffee once again I kid you not we were served coffee in paper cups! With as they called it cream, which was normal skimmed or semiskimmed milk. Nobody came to ask if we had a nice meal, thank us or anything, although however when the member of our party who went to pay was at the cash desk, he was asked are you going to leave us a tip, and I’m sure you can imagine what we said.

And for this terrible day at a Christmas buffet in this restaurant, we payed the sum of £520 for 13 absolute horrendous dinners

Their service, food and menus may be good across the rest of your year, But here as a Christmas outing for a party of 13 on a special day it was utter, utter rubbish! I would never want to set foot in this place again and certainly would not recommend as we even heard staff arguing on the way out about tables and what was for what table and which meals for which table in front of other customers.

The only thing that made the day was that we had fun as a bunch of friends out together for a special Christmas dinner we managed to laugh it off between us and put it down to an experience we won’t ever take again at this restaurant. Absolute rubbish all...

I had booked an evening table for my daughter's birthday and I wanted two large balloons to be placed above the table, and to have the cake brought out after the meals. Jimmy was really helpful and assured me that he'd take care of everything, and I should not stress; he said he’ll keep the cake in the fridge and bring it out only when I indicated to him. When I and the family arrived, a staff member greeted us politely and gave us a warm welcome and showed us to our table. The venue was very pleasant and clean; we all felt very relaxed. All the staff were smartly dressed, spoke very politely and made us feel special. The service throughout was service with smiles all around! Even though I'm not a hot & spicy food fan, the menu had so much choice, for vegetarians and different meat lovers, that I was able to choose a good starter and a main. My only niggle was that there was a limited choice of beers, especially alcohol-free ones, but that was not a big problem, it’s good to try different things. Throughout the evening, the staff, especially Shahzad (Jimmy’s son) were very attentive though not so much as to make us feel uncomfortable. They were friendly and pleasant. At the end, when I discretely let them know, Jimmy, Shahzad and another staff brought the cake out, and sang happy birthday to my daughter - she was pleasantly surprised. The venue was great but the restaurant could do with a bigger car park, although after 6pm street parking is available. Other than this, I was amazed how clean and fresh the inside was, even the toilets were immaculately clean! If we had to highlight just one thing from our experience, it would be how friendly, helpful, polite yet professional the staff were. I would say, this is the best...

Arrived at shalimar gold last night at around 1115pm along with 5 business clients. We had been looking forward to trying the new shalimar gold having been a regular customer at the old Shalimar Restaurant. I asked a member of staff for a table and waited to be seated. The member of staff went away and returned a few minutes later accompanied by a colleague. Then unbelievably these two members of staff discussed between them and in front of us whether we would be seated. To my disgust one of the members of staff was actually attempting to whisper to his colleague through the corner of his mouth which we could all blatantly hear "what do you reckon, what do you reckon" to which received my response "is there a problem"??

The member of staff then decided to state that they were near closing and as such we couldn't be seated despite the fact that other diners were still being served food in the restaurant.

I have no objections to being told upon arrival at a restaurant that they are closing or they are full etc but I take offence to the treatment myself and my party received from these individuals last night. Whatever their reasons for turning away our custom were it is entirely unacceptable to openly discuss amongst themselves and in front of us whether we would be allowed to dine that evening. Had they simply said they were closing we would have left without a problem.

The only positive that I can take from this whole experience is that we were able to try out the Viceroy restaurant situated several doors up from the shalimar gold restaurant and I must say that the service, food and overal experience was excellent. A meal for 6 including drinks and a celebratory bottle of champagne was approximately £250.00 bargain in...