Needoo Grill — Restaurant in London

Worst customer service post-pandemic, decent food but seriously overpriced. Restaurant resting on their outdated laurels.

Visited this restaurant on 28th October as part of a large group (10+ people) for birthday clebration. It is was not for the birthday celebration I would have walked out. Given how bad my experience was I will break down this review in separate sections.

Food: I ordered a karahi mutton masala, large rice plate and chilli nan. I received a karahi chicken masala (which was not exchanged for what I ordered) and small rice plate which was also not exchanged. See 'ordering process' below for more information.

The food came fast (too fast almost). The chicken masala I ended up eating was decent but nothing special about it. Even though the prices were similar to Dishoom this place is a far cry in terms of quality from Dishoom.

For the lamb chops another person ordered these came suspiciously fast with the onions and plate simmering and sizzling hot but the lamb chops themselves not so. The waiter also told the person that the lamb is a bit hard beforehand. I suspected that this was an indication that the lamb chops were pre-cooked and this is not the way they are meant to be served.

The nans were also so oily that it felt like oily grease had been added to them on purpose. If you can eat your dish without one I strongly recommend you go nan-less in this establishment.

Menu, Ordering and billing process The restaurant is still in 20th century and do all the ordering on paper and have not investing in an electronic system. The bill items did not correspond to the items ordered unsurprisingly. The waiters did not speak english well, looked confused, so it was not feasible to rectify the errors and get the proper bill.

For some reason whoever designed the menu of this small restaurant thought it was a good idea to provide 60+ dishes (!) without adequate explanation of what is included in each dish (see photo). To add insult to injury to the customer the photos of dishes do not even provide an indication what is the name of this dish making the ordering of items from the menu a painful experience. Also unlike other restaurants papadoms and sauces were charged extra (our bill had about £10 worth of papadoms alone).

Customer Service While expressing that 2 out of 3 items delivered to me where not what I had ordered, I was ignored repeatedly by the waiter. When the waiter finished bringing all of the dishes and raised my hand to grab his attention, he looked at me and then turned his back on me for the next 10 minutes talking to another waiter both avoiding eye contact. Eventually I asked a member of our group to interrupt them and to avoid causing a scene I (re-)ordered the missing items from my order and paying extra. Atmosphere/ Decor The restaurant decor is similar to a large version of a fish and chips shop with seating and cleanliness was an issue. The place had no atmosphere and the lightning in the customer areas was as bright as in the kitchen where the food was prepared.

When leaving the restaurant I noticed that the management had a sense of humour with a Timeout 'recommended' photo dating back from... 2016. This is a sign for me that management is stuck in the past given that 2016 is 6 year ago and this restaurant does not deserve and commendations in 2022.

Payment process Be warned that the waiters will not take it kindly if you wish to pay by card. Before bringing the machine to allow me to pay by card I was asked at point blank if I had cash twice (even though I clearly had my card held in my hand). By this point I gathered that the ordering on paper was not...

Important update- Next Morning after my review below, I woke up with the worst stomach ache and I feel terrible. If I could give this joke of a Business Zero stars I could. They can’t even cook hygienically. Both me and my mate currently are having terrible stomach aches. This place is disgraceful AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!!

Absolutely terrible, I wouldn’t even bother wasting your time and money here! Firstly, the customer service is shocking. I was unsure what Methi Lamb was and I asked the gentleman serving us regarding the product, he laughs at my face and replies “You don’t know what Methi Lamb is” Long and behold, it wasn’t funny when he had to turn around ask one of his colleagues what that is. Indictable! We then proceeded to order our food, which they took a while with! The food then arrived but they gave us the wrong order. We were given Chicken Jalfrezi instead of Lamb Jalfrezi. Considering it wasn’t really busy, they should have got our order correct as a minimum. Onto the food, the main talking point. It was good…at being disgusting! The Chicken Tikka for starters lacked any sort of flavour! They must have just thrown chicken cubes into Oil and used the World’s worth of onions in it. There was a hint of lemon, otherwise, it was bland, really bland! It was extremely oily and the texture was vile. It was as if a child was the Chef. The curries were horrific! They use too many onions are barely any meat or chicken within their curries. For £10.50 for a small curry, the quantity was good (I say this but the whole dish was just onions) but the quality was terrible! The Lamb tasted very fatty and again extremely oily. I am well aware it is a curry but I have been to similar Restaurants and their curries are nowhere near as Oily as Needoo Grill. Hichki near Altab Ali Park has a similar set up but it is a million times better. I also find it rather strange than the Naan is so expensive as well and I was completely put off by the quality of the Naan. They literally throw Ghee all over it before serving it to you and it is sickening. It was really shocking, and the man who took our bill was very rude. He was not prepared to reduce the total bill of £38 (we only had 2 curries) by £1 get the food was dreadful. You will also see the Restaurant is very disorganised! Overall, I do not recommend them to you. There are plenty of better places much better in fact of New Road such as Monster and Sahara Grill. Do not waste your time coming here, I can’t comprehend how shambolic this place is yet it is constantly given the big up. Only because of the size of...

Avoid if you want mediocore food, arguementative waiters, borderline scammers. Avoid.

Edit: So I've just recieved a response from the owner of the restaurant. Firstly, thank you for responding to this. Secondly, this is hardly what you'd call good customer service and not even an attempt to rectify things.

Firstly, you cannot leave two reviews of one place on the same account. I have no clue why your management believes that nor where you got that message from, and if anything it's surprising to see such a baseless (and impossible) accusation come from your management.

We also didn't devour all of our food, your waiters proceeded to give us the wrong item multiple times to which your waiters reluctantly "rectified" or worse, pulled faces at us. Examples include giving one of our party a fish karahi instead of a Baby Chicken Masala, giving us Peri Peri Chicken* instead of Tandoori Chicken to which we didn't realise until after the meal, and serving us cold and most likely expired naan-bread which again took a lot of effort to rectify.

Thirdly, you're right your restaurant holds a very generous offer... Too bad you all failed to adhere to the offer. The original offer was a 50% discount to which your waiters gave us a 33% discount, then proceeded to not just quibble, but actively argue and try to REFUSE giving us the full discount, by arguing over just £6. If that doesn't seem scammy, I really don't know what does.

Your passive aggressive note does nothing but create a bad impression upon your business and staff. Then again, I'm not interested in continuing this after this edit and snowballing this into a cat fight. On our final interaction, we wished you all the best of luck and peacefully walked away. This passive aggressive and defensive comment from your management team was seriously not necessary and creates a bad impression for your business.

Good luck to all of you, once again. Wish you well.

Correction: Half chicken, not peri...