Spice Merchant Cookham — Restaurant in England

So my sister highly recommended this place to us to the point where she ended up buying us Jasmine Afternoon Tea gift vouchers. My wife and I booked in for our afternoon tea today and unfortunately it was a little disappointing.

Points to note:

There is limited parking around the restaurant as there is no dedicated parking for the restaurant. It took us a while to find parking but we eventually did on one of the side streets.

The afternoon tea was between 12pm – 3pm, we booked in for 1.30pm and started our afternoon tea. When the waiter brought over the food, the presentation looked great, however the portions were really small! I asked the waiter if this is it or can we order more food? Unfortunately the waiter said the Chef had gone home and left at 2pm! The Advertisement states between 12-3pm, yet what happens if you book in at 2? Do you have no chef? False advertising.

When my sister had gone for afternoon tea she had 2 extra items which were not given to us, Square grilled Paneer pieces and Onion Bhajis (Pakoras) were missing! It was a shame as there seems to be a lack of consistency as to what you get.

#The clotted cream was runny and the scones were overheated!

Unfortunately after our experience I would not recommend afternoon tea here, there are far better...

The worst Indian place I have ever been to. We arrived as per the booking at 8:30 and still had to wait for the table to become available. We asked for still water and they brought sparkling water twice. We ordered the starters but had to wait for an hour for the food to reach our table. The chicken wings were burnt but marinated so much so you couldn’t taste the black/burnt skin of the chicken. They said they had run out of Onion Bhajee, and they offered a very dry and tasteless Pakora which I could not eat. The Peshwari nan was black underneath, as I took a bite, I realised it tasted burnt and it was all black underneath. Overall the food tasted very bad and the service was really slow. They did not ask how the food was otherwise I would have told them on the night. Something wasn’t right that night as if the chef wasn’t in the kitchen! I do not...

Visited today as 2 couples and I can honestly say this is one of the nicest Curry's I have ever had.

The staff are great and they tick every box for covid preparedness, hand sanitizer on the way in, throw away menus, facemask, gloves they really have thought of everything and I felt completely comfortable the whole time. They have reduced table numbers significantly and the nearest table to you is well over the minimum mandatory.

Everything Tandoori from this place is delicious I would recommend getting the Tandoori mixed starter, the Atlantic prawns & Lollypop chicken to share as a starter.

For mains I have a lamb curry, aloo gobi & bread basket and all was incredible next time however I would go for more tandoori meats maybe the lb chops as the starter was spectacular.

Can't wait to take friends and family back as know they will...