Booffi Village - The Buffet Restaurant — Restaurant in Great Britain

Not an experience we'd like to repeat.. On arrival the first thing that we struggled with was the parking. With no bay parking, we had to leave a gap between the cars already parked & ours so that they would be able to leave when they were ready. We were greeted by overly friendly staff, who seated us where they wanted, not giving us a choice, despite having about 40 tables crammed in (with little room between them). We arrived after 6pm on Thursday night & thought this was extremely quiet considering it was the start of peak dinner time dinning. The waiting staff had barely showed us to our table, we had not yet sat down, yet he had asked us if we were here for the buffet & what wanted to drink.. there's being on the ball, but give us a chance. We made our way up to the buffet. I made a beeline for the salad bar as my first port of call, I was extremely disappointed.. shredded iceberg lettuce, thick slices of tomato & huge chunks of cucumber, a variety of questionable sauces/dressings with no labels. Cold prawns looked like they had already been pre-chewed for you, boiled eggs looked like they got dropped & picked back up, not a single one was clean looking or intact. Safe to say I dodged the salad bar with a wide berth. My partner dove right in loading his plate with a variety of chicken tikka balti (way too salty) chicken bhoona (bland) chicken pakora (really dry, struggled to cut, tasteless) mushroom pakora (soggy) rice (underseasoned) peshwari naan (soggy) garlic naan (over used garlic) plain naan (dry, brittle). I opted for mushroom pakora (mines were hard little lumps that could be used for gold balls) sweet rice, garlic mushrooms (too creamy), veg curry (really soggy veg) poppadoms (tasted like they had been cooked in last week's used oil- absolutely disgusting). I wanted to try the macaroni cheese, but decided against it when I lifted the lid and it looked like they had used cottage cheese. Honestly looked like someone had thrown up over the pasta. We soldiered on & ate what we had taken. Staff kept coming to the table asking if the food was OK and if everything was alright. Yeah, we lied & said yes hoping the next selections would be better. How wrong were we! Choosing from the Chinese selection on offer we both opted for chow mein & salt and chilli chicken, the noodles were so dry and stuck to the container. The salt & chili chicken bites were like chicken jerky nuggets, so dry, definately not fresh, would not be surprised if this had been left over from lunchtime or possibly the day before. Again we ate what we had taken and struggled to find anything enjoyable about it. Again we were approached by staff asking if everything was OK. So far the best thing had been our soda lime drinks order. At this point my partner looked at the dessert bar & said I'm not having any that, put off by the previous servings. I opted for the obviously bought in Strawberry cheesecake thinking it was the safest option. I opted for a few sweets too. Choosing jelly dummies and some licorice. There was a big bowl of pineapple cube hard sweets that looked like some one had poured water over the bowl and tried to rescue them. All stuck together in a shiny sticky mess. The offerings for the chocolate fountain were many but no (standard) strawberries and cutting waffles down to inch size pieces is just embarrassing. After eating my slice of cheesecake, I had eaten one of the licorice wheels (with another on my plate) when a waiter came up and asked if I had finished, put off I said yeah, he asked if everything was OK, again we lied. He asked if we were local as he said he remembers us from our last visit.... don't think so pal, this was our first time here. So off put by his blatant lie, we got up from the table without finishing our drinks & paid the bill at the bar. After paying the bill, the owner quizzed us about where we lived and if we'd be back & offered free shots... to a driver?? No need to tell us we're not welcome like you did to another customer who left a bad review. We already decided we...

Visited today, 3rd April 2025 for lunch, a return visit with three other diners. On my last visit I was given a 20% discount voucher with an expire date and no communication about when it could be used or limits of its usage.

We all enjoyed the food, the variety, freshness and display was fairly good of starters, mains and desserts, service was OK, wouldn't say excellent but fair and the waitress was pleasant enough. All was good, couldn't really complain to be honest.

Then.....BOOM! When paying the bill the waitress refused the discount card....it's only valid at night, zero notice on the card or at the till, not even a notice displayed on the door to indicate the limitations on the use of the gifted, by the restaurant, card....I didn't request the card in the first visit, it was gifted in a flourish of smiles and nods and thanks for visiting, no communication of "this is to be used for the evenings only" just a smile by the waiter at the time and a see you again. Obviously, I am going to question this....and request the discount...as would most people, to be told "we stopped lunch discount last week" so off trotted the waitress to get, I presume, the manager. The gentleman (I use that term lightly) returned to confirm, no lunch discount, we stopped it last month....bit of a mixed story there? I questioned the validity in the claim, indicated no notice on the discount card or displayed near by, the change of story (the discount card was given two weeks ago) and questioned why give a card to a lunch visitor if its not valid at lunch? Now....time has passed, there are two other independent diners now waiting to pay....and in there hands....yip an identical discount card, which they confirmed they had used at lunch time previously! ...... I am fairly sure trading standards would find this questionable..... which I suggested to the now angry manager who informed me "he can't see everything when he is out the back" fair comment, i would suggest then he keeps his waiting team upto speed with his ever-changing discount policy. So...how to fix this issue? Light bulb moment of realisation for myself was if he chose to change his discount policy on a whim then I could choose to change my wish to pay for the meals we had just eaten...sounds fair in my book. If you can change the rules of the discount, I can change my mind on paying? Fair deal! Thank you very much, it was a lovely lunch. Obviously that was not acceptable in the managers thought process and he applied the discount. Which was thanked for and I again said thank you, lovely lunch, I will be back to be promptly informed me your barred!

In a slightly confused mind, am barred? I returned to my table to collect my thought and belongings, and we left, again, on my way out I again said thank you and said see you next week to recieve the response "your barred, don't come back" excellent customer services, it's almost as good as the outdated and in need of TLC restaurant appearance.

So if you enjoy fairly decent average food, served by fairly average waiting team in a restaurant that's in dire need of renovation and upgrading this is the place to go. Convenience and location took us here, none of us have ever felt unwell after a visit, which is what kept us returning.

I would recommend IF you have been given a free discount voucher, question its validity before eating and the manager has a course in customer care, service and polite conversation. On reflection I wonder how often if someone, especially a female, questions his questionable decision if this is his normal reaction? Could this possibly be the reason at 1pm on a Friday there were only 12 diners in his restaurant?

Good luck if you have a discount voucher, and thank you for reading my very...

I’m not entirely sure how this place has so many good reviews. The experience I had seems vastly different.

From the outside Boofi Village seems really inviting but when you walk In it doesn’t exactly scream “come here and eat”

We asked for 3 simple drinks all non alcoholic which needed another member of staff to come over and re check what we had asked for as there seemed to be some confusion over how a pint of coke and a pint of cobra sounds similar.!? Apparently you can have bottomless drinks here but this wasn’t mentioned nor was it advertised in the drinks menu. So you would have thought after asking for soft drinks it may have been mentioned by the waitress that was clearly struggling to understand basic English.

In the middle there’s all the food which wasn’t particularly fresh, you’ve a small selection of Indian, Chinese and kebabs with basic hot dogs and Pizza. There’s also a dessert table with chocolate fountains, sweets, ice cream and various cakes.

The pizza was pretty stale and very chewy, of all the food I sampled not one bit was hotter than Luke warm and some was colder than that!

After witnessing the staff take what I presume was freshly cooked chicken/food in a metal container and pour the old cold stuff in I didn’t bother getting anymore after that. We witnessed this twice. Don’t buffets normally take the old stuff away and replace with fresh stuff? Not mix it all in together… it’s no wonder the food didn’t taste particularly great!

We also witnessed one member of staff scoop what appeared to be old chocolate from the chocolate fountains that had hardened on the plates and throw it back in, but not before he had accidentally dropped it on the table. Once again, seeing this we were put off by getting desserts.

I wouldn’t recommend this place to anyone. Perhaps there’s times it might be good but when we arrived for dinner it was a Friday night and you’d expect it to be quite busy but it was pretty dead with little atmosphere.

A shame really as it looked quite promising from the outside and the...