Taste of India — Restaurant in England

I hate writing bad reviews about my favourite food, but the Taste of India failed on every level and is fully deserving of the lowest rating possible. The restaurant’s website says it aspires to be the best Indian restaurant on the Isle of Wight. Based on my experience they are a million miles away from that and here’s why:

1. Check everything that you ordered has been provided before you leave the restaurant. They omitted one of our main courses.
2. Don’t assume that the restaurant will include your 10% discount for collecting your take-away. They charged us full price.
3. The Taste of India does not take credit cards, so make sure you have cash.

We rang up for a take-away at 7:30 and the manager said it would be ready at 8:10. We turned up on time to collect the meal and my son was told it was ready but they did not take credit card payments. Which restaurants nowadays do not take cards! This was not mentioned on their website so my son had to walk to a cash machine to draw out the necessary cash. When he returned to the restaurant 5 minutes later, he was then told that the meal was not ready after all. He settled the bill and waited another 15 minutes before it was ready. I’m suspicious that they didn’t start cooking it until we arrived.

We had to drive 15 minutes back to our holiday accommodation so it was nearly 9pm before we sat down to eat, only to find that one of the main dishes had been missed out! We ended up sharing 3 meals between four as it would have taken too long to get the replacement food.

Being quite annoyed by all of this we checked the bill only to find the 10% discount for collecting the food had not been deducted!

Not only that but the food we did have was of a very poor standard. The sauce with my chicken pasanda was extremely gloopy (see picture) and had far too much ground almond. Also, the chicken tikka masala was bland and bizarrely had a coconut flavour. The garlic nan was powdery and then seemed to turn to a sticky dough in my mouth after a few chews. The Bombay potatoes were slightly undercooked and again lacked flavour.

We threw most of the meal away and I fired off an email to the manager expressing our disappointment and advising him we were going to post reviews on Trip Advisor and Google. He came back within the hour to offer his apologies which he put down to staff errors. He offered to deliver the missing meal and refund us for the discount we never received but by then it was much too late to eat and the small refund of around £4 just seemed too much bother to pursue for such a disastrous customer service and eating experience. By far the worst Indian restaurant we have had the misfortune...

Had a racist experience here and that made the entire experience annoying.

I was here with my cousin's. We were 4 adults and a kid. The staff was very friendly at the first instance. The couple who run the restaurant is very friendly and amazing. The food quantity is less but it depends on what portions one is used to eat.

So we had ordered some rotis, some Curry's, papad and we were EATING WITH HANDS. So one of the owner guy (indian) comes to us and tells us that he hasn't seen that for a long time now. We thought he was pleasantly surprised but then he tells us that the regular British customers might write a review about it and it won't be so good for the restaurant. I told the guy that the British know about India and Indian food for centuries now and he need not worry that they think it's strange to eat with hands. He tried to argue a bit but then changed the topic. That was really annoying and unimaginable. I have been living in Europe for more than 10 years now and I have never faced such internal racism anywhere from anyone in Europe.

The other couple who manage the restaurant were friendly for sure but this one guy who was worried that we were eating with hands and that other people might think strange about it, ruined the entire experience. I suggest that guy to introspect himself and question his attitude towards other Indians. There is nothing wrong in eating with hands and if I want to be arrogant, I paid for the food so I can eat it the way I want. But we are all humans and make mistakes. I hope he thinks about it twice before mistreating...

Now it's not terrible but just a few bits letting it down and it's become to often to be an off chance. Sometimes the food can be swimming in oil others perfect. Always missing something from delivery, last time ordered 8 cans received 5 different to what had been ordered and this time missing 1x steam rice, 1 garlic naan and the only can of drink on the order. After a phone call was told I had only ordered 2 breads not 3 and the rest was just missing so I agreed to pay for the extra bread in redelivery. After checking my order confirmation in email it was all on there as I ordered so had to phone back and say I've paid for it. After lengthy to and fro saying they'd charged me different from my confirmation etc and basically blaming me and then their online system he said ah yes it is all on there. He then said so we won't worry about the charge for the extra naan, I lost it a little, making it out your doing me a favour. No mention of a discount or any good will gesture 1 for blaming me and 2 having to wait for half my dinner to turn up so I could enjoy my meal 20 minutes after the 1st delivery by which time half had cooled down. Shocking customer service really. So you may be lucky and get all your meal and then you may be lucky and it all be perfectly cooked it can happen but you just don't know, Russian...