The Magna Tandoori — Restaurant in England

Had a poor experience from start to finish at the Magna. We had a table booked for 8:30 on Wednesday evening for the eat out to help out scheme. From walking in the door everything seemed chaotic. Lots of people sitting waiting for their tables, including sitting around the bar, piled with glasses. Because people were waiting so long for tables it made it impossible to follow social distancing rules and there seemed to be very little in place to help with following the government guidelines. We were told to sit and wait for our table and that we would be offered a drink while we waited. We were handed menus to look at which were covered in food (clearly not cleaned). We sat for 20 minutes before we had to ask for a drink. As we sat, people continued to turn up and que for tables making it quite uncomfortable. The menu prices had gone up significantly from the last time we had eaten there (Pre-Covid) for what was already quite a pricey Indian restaurant. A pound on most dishes, £3 on a bottle of wine and £3 on the lunchtime set meal. We finally got taken to our table after 30 minutes. Food wise, it wasn’t bad although I found my starter very poor. Lamb tikka was very small pieces, very small portion and overcooked. I didn’t complain about this as it was really busy. Whilst being sat down staff were wondering around with food not knowing where to take it. We were offered someone else’s food twice. Most of this could be excused as they were really busy however what happened at the end of the meal I can not forgive. We asked for the bill and immediately noticed we had been overcharged. By this point already being unhappy with the experience it didn’t go down very well. When I expressed my issues with the owner he totally lost his temper and began pointing and shouting at us before other members of staff had to come and calm him down and deal with the issue. The second member of staff who came over was a lot more reasonable and corrected the bill however after being so unhappy and being verbally abused by the owner we were still charged £44 for the privilege (after the eat out to help out discount). Because of this, I will never return to the restaurant. I eat out very regularly and have honestly never seen anything like this. It really felt like they had taken on far too much that night, the restaurant was rammed and I think it showed in the food and service. The owner took the criticism extremely personally and his behavior was...

My husband and I were enjoying a few days away and decided to try a meal in this establishment. The staff were very friendly in the restaurant when we entered. My husband and I ordered our meals and our starters arrived and were tasty enough.

Our mains then arrived, my husband had ordered a lamb bhiryani and I had ordered giant tandoori prawns and we had a garlic nan between us. However, on biting into one of the prawns, I felt something hard which I thought was just a bit of shell. To my shock I pulled a piece of metal about an inch long out of my mouth which transpired to be part of the tandoori skewer which had broken off. We made the staff aware and were duly offered apologies and were told that our bill would be halved. We didn't want to make a fuss and said that was fine.

However, when the bill arrived it turned out that we had been given a £25 discount instead of the bill being halved. We misunderstood the bill and didn't leave enough money to cover it (£47), we had left £34 as we believed the bill to be £25 and we left a tip because everyone had been so nice. We left the restaurant only to be chased up the street by a member of staff to inform us we had underpaid them by £13.

I realise we had made a mistake and were confused about the amount of the bill but to come chasing a customer up the street who could have potentially broken a tooth or swallowed the piece of skewer I felt was a bit cheeky. I was very disappointed and I...

I think this is by far the worst Indian restaurant I’ve ever been to. The decor is beyond tacky, which should have been the first red flag, but my experience told me that the gaudier a place looks, the better the food usually.

Not the case. How do you mess up something as simple as a butter paneer or Daal? The mains were completely flavourless, the pilau just tasted boiled, the sauce for the butter chicken had about half a bag of sugar dumped in it and was almost inedible.

Service was off, I think the servers just came off as disinterested and strangely intense at times. One half hearted attempt at a conversation was very quickly abandoned in a very awkward way. Now I’m not saying a server should smile or talk to customers, I know I don’t want to a lot of the time when I’m waitering, but if you’re going to ask a customer about their day, when they tell you about it don’t just say ‘right’ and wander off?

Anyway it was kind of entering so bad it’s good territory because the whole experience was comically terrible. Did I pay for the whole thing? Did I say ‘yeah it was great’ when asked how the food was? You’re damn right I did. Because I’m terminally British and I refuse to express my true feelings to anyone and only so behind people’s backs or on the internet where I can be semi-anonymous.

The only thing I loathe more than the food...