Vilasa Indian Restaurant — Restaurant in England

We first enter... Very clean, its a wet day and there is a guy mopping all the excess water that people leave behind upon entering the restaurant... I was impressed. We sit at the table... A member of staff keeps reiterating that we have the table for 1 hour 45 minutes. As a ex chef i know what thats for, they are turning tables so that they can sit 2 sittings in a evening. I dont mind, we are all struggling with rising energy costs etc however there is no need to hurry and rush people... We then order our drinks, my friend had to ask for water 3 times, and the J2O that me and the driver order are room temperature, i was like oh well I'll let them off. Moving on... The ordering system was convoluted and made things ridiculously complicated... The waiter also wasn't friendly, and looked at us funny. He felt rushed and got a bit funny when i wanted to order some vegetable side dishes. Because of the troublesome ordering system, he made us order our main dishes, then the rice, then basically went to walk away instead of taking our naan and vegetable side dishes order. Over all he was impolite, unhelpful, the ordering system was awful and he wasnt at all helpful, we felt rushed... Side note he didnt even ask do you want spoons to eat or nothing overall AWFUL service. (one last thing, the table was too small, we struggled to even fit everything on the table) Now... The food... It took 55 minutes to come out, which i took note because of the very impolite reminder that we only had a hour and 45 there... Good job we didnt order starters eh? the others didnt really have a problem with their food... Mine on the other hand was a disaster, the dal tadka was far too watery, and the portion for £3:80 was beyond a joke, my pathia had pre cooked chicken in, i knew from the moment i got it... It was DRY. I used the serving spoon to eat mine and it was struggling to go through it was that dry and rubbery. Next we move onto the not very 'cheesy' na'an it must of had a pinch of cheese on top, yes it was cooked in a tandoor oven you could tell by the bubbles etc however... Rest assured the title 'cheesy' is nonsense, of my dishes the best one? Bhindi bhaji... Okra is one of my favourites especially as i travelled india for 6 months... It wasn't slimy, it was well cooked, props to the chef on that one. Lastly on the food, special rice, special would imply its special not just... Some egg, fried onions and some peas 😂 whenever you go to a restaurant or takeaway and order special you get most everything in that rice for example, i order special fried rice from the chinese takeaway you get prawns, char siu pork, beef, chicken and egg in (in some ive ended up with duck, peas, beansprouts, garlic chives etc in) 😒 so to pay 3:50 for a small portion might i add (everything was small portions) for some pilau rice with some onions, peas and egg in... Come on guys... Put some cauliflower in or some keema or cashews or coconut in etc... You have them there on your menu!! We payed 80 pounds for a mediocre experience, and for some very small portions of food, one of us had never eaten a curry before and that was why we went all out for the highest rated. Because i view your nation culinarily as the greatest in the world and everyone and i mean EVERYONE should experience it once in their lifetime. I dont think we will return and i dislike giving a bad review like this, it makes me feel awkward and bad P.s goan fish curry! Colour me impressed, not enough restaurants make this here... A shame. Brings back memories of when i did spend time in goa being taught...

Seemed a bit poorly organised as we came in, our table wasn’t ready but we ate early so not sure why it wasn’t ready. Was impressed with the look of the menu, lots of allergen signage etc so you would know what’s in each meal (always important for us as one of us is vegan). We ordered our meals, I noticed the waiter hadn’t heard one of our party say her dish was to be vegan, so I made sure to say vegan when ordering the rice. We were then thoroughly scorned for not making it clear immediately when ordering that one of us was vegan (which we had but it was missed). The dish first ordered (which was marked vegan on the menu) had to be altered on the tablet which seemed a huge inconvenience, the atmosphere was awful I couldn’t believe we were told off in such a manner. Scorning us for not stating immediately that one of us is vegan seemed a complete juxtaposition to what then happened as they made two huge errors. First, the vegan special rice (marked vegan on the menu and requested and marked as vegan when ordering) was served with egg in. The vegan nearly said “don’t worry I won’t have any” and rather than insist on correcting anything the waiter seemed chuffed at not having to fuss about us and said “so all okay then?”, but I wasn’t happy after being scorned earlier so I insisted it was swapped. So they swapped it out, very quickly, but for an entirely different rice altogether that we didn’t really want. More worryingly, the vegan dish was cooked in ghee which has only become apparent later this evening after leaving the restaurant due to the vegan throwing up their entire meal. Note to the restaurant, ghee is a dairy product and not vegan! And while we’re here, egg also isn’t vegan. Why is the menu marked so well (with the exception of one of the chicken starters being marked vegan) but the dishes aren’t executed correctly? We were also served the wrong bottle of wine, which wasn’t an accident because the one we ordered was out of stock so they just served us something else without asking or telling us. When we noticed and asked for the wine menu, they then told us what happened, after we had poured it. Didn’t pour the wine either just left it unopened on the table for us to do, probably done on purpose to try and hide the fact it was the wrong bottle. Then on the bill charged us for the wine they’d run out of as well as the one we were given. Easy mistake to forget to remove it, but in front of the whole restaurant the waiters had a squabble at the bar about who got our bill wrong and another telling off. At least it wasn’t aimed at us that time. Pretty...

Now, first off this review is not about the food and I’ve waited a couple of weeks before posting to calm down. Dining at any restaurant for me is about the food and customer service and for the latter is what has caused me to give this 1 star review. I regularly go out and order takeaway Indian food but never once have I experienced the disregard for a customers situation and rude attitude afforded that I faced when dining at Vilasa with my young family. I attended At 5:30pm on a Saturday with my wife, 8yr old, 6 yr old and 2yr old and ordered 2 main meal curries, rice, selection of naan breads, a large sharing platter starter and soft drinks for us to share (this was the children’s first Indian dining experience and as such we were not sure what they would like but wanted to expand on their food experiences and introduce a variety of foods for them to try). However my order was flatly refused as apparently this was not enough to warrant eating at the restaurant. Even though the sharing platter was more expensive than all main dishes I was told we needed to order more main dishes as we were a table of 5. This would have been plenty of food for my young family and there was no restriction mentioned anywhere. When questioning reasoning the manager didn’t even have the dignity to discuss this with me and would only converse via our server. The attitude we faced was disgusting and I would strongly suggest you do not consider visiting with children. They have lost my custom as a result and I will never use this place again. As said, this is not a review of the food as I have enjoyed eating here at the past but the owners need to have a long look in the mirror and consider how they treat people. The restaurant was had 2 other tables in at this time and we would have been in and out within the hour as bedtime was approaching. They have not only lost our custom but the opportunity to encourage future generations to...