Ganges Restaurant — Restaurant in Exeter

Reading the Ganges website would indicate that this restaurant is "noticeably the most sophisticated for the true excellence of our food", which I feel is an exaggeration as the experience I had was fairly average.

The experience at Ganges from years back was one where fine dining would be a fitting phrase - meals were served on fresh white cloths, the meals themselves would arrive on candle heated serving dishes and the plates would be reassuringly hot at the time of serving. After the meal you would have a hot cloth to refresh yourself which made the experience worth it.

Instead meals are served warm, and the tandoori prawns were overcooked and tough. I would say however, the massala sauce was rich in flavour. A note about the ambience, this was massively distracting to a very noisy compressor that was powering some kind of fish tank or water feature nearby. When the bill was due, a plate was provided with three small chocolates.

I feel for the cost (£80 for three people, no starters and only soft drinks), it doesn't live up to the hype - but having had fond memories of eating here in the late 2000s, I'm hopeful they can regain the great reputation...

I told the Chap who took my order that I would give them a review of the takeaway I ordered, a Chicken tikka Vindaloo. I hoped to give a glowing 5 stars as he told me they were the best in town. I thought that may have given them a heads up but... Maybe they had run out of base sauce and watered it down as the sauce ran off the plate almost clear when I poured out onto the plate, not even mixed together. I have never seen this before and it was cold?. The result was a Watery liquid, very little spice or flavour and one small piece of potato. Then a fist full of curry leaves that was the over riding taste. Watery curry leaf juice, not a vindaloo. I ordered chicken tikka pieces in the sauce. These must have been marinading less than an hour because none of the marinade had gone into the chicken. The chicken was rock hard like an old laying hen. My mushroom pillau rice was boiled rice with mushrooms again no flavour. Not the best in town I hope. The lot went...

Ordered a takeaway following a cinema trip, we were first in the door as they opened and had ordered our meal by 5.40pm. We were with friends and so placed two orders. Over 30 mins passed and one order came out but then found out that our second order hadn’t been sent to the kitchen. Restaurant was getting busier and so it took another 30 mins before the second order came out. Apologies and a free drink given but then discovered on reaching home that our order was wrong and the Tandoori King Prawns that I ordered and been charged for was now some overcooked dry chicken drenched in oil. Will never use them again. To add to this, heard this morning from our friends that their main courses were in each other’s choice of sauces and the chilli nans (the reason we came here) didn’t have a scrap of fresh chilli as usual, just chilli flakes. Come on Ganges, what’s going on there????? So disappointing at a cost of over £60...