KING TRADITIONAL INDIAN CURRIES — Restaurant in Maldon

Disappointing experience after having high hopes. My partner had previously visited midweek and suggest we go for a celebratory meal. The reviews on Google only hyped me up more.

From the moment we turned up it was obvious that the place was incredibly disorganised. There were debates about which table we should be sat at. Unfortunately it only continues from here. Slow to take drinks order, slow to take food order (and 3 people asked if we had ordered), starters slow to arrive, mains slow to arrive (although we were warned about mains taking longer). At the end of it we had been in the restaurant 2hrs and 40mins and our dirty plates hadn’t even been cleared from our tables. No offer of additional drinks throughout meal and we decided to leave instead of getting dessert and coffee. We went to pay our bill and found an additional £20 of drinks had been added to our tab, which were removed, but they seemed more concerned about working out who actually ordered them rather than letting us settle our bill. Honestly, if it wasn’t a small family run business, I would’ve been asking for the service charge to be refunded and requesting a discount on the food.

The food itself was nice, but personally, not as good as the reviews would have you believe. It was good quality, home cooked and traditional, but everything was excessively oily for my liking. What we received lacked any of the presentation you see in the Google images, and I felt pricier than the other reviews would have you believe. Our corrected bill was over £100 for two people, which was only a shared starter, mains and limited drinks for two. We over-ordered slightly, but only by about £10 worth of food.

As much as I wanted to like it, the slow and disorganised service tainted the whole evening. It seemed to be the case for other customers as well as plenty of tables had been in there longer than us. I know I’m in the minority compared to the other reviews, but wanted to share this in the hope the restaurant can learn from it...

Delicious food in a warm and friendly environment. Such a welcome addition to Maldon's restaurant scene. A family-run business with a passion for cooking real Indian dishes, using quality ingredients to create curries bursting with flavour. The menu is small but there is something for everyone, and you can choose the degree of spicy heat that works for you. The waiting staff are young and enthusiastic which makes up for the slightly haphazard service - nothing that some further training can't put right. A drink we ordered wasn't to our taste, and a replacement was provided free of charge with no hassle - brilliant. The onion bahjis were perfectly cooked - just spicy and crispy enough to make you want to order more! Good job we didn't - our main courses were generous portions of mouthwatering meat, vegetables and rice that hopefully we did justice to. This is a far cry from the British interpretation of Indian food that is generally available, and all the better for that. We'll definitely be...

It's been a few weeks since our visit to King's where we received the most shocking experience. My husband and I have been thinking shall we or shan't we do a review. We absolutely loved the food there and we were both too shocked to respond at the time and its only now we decided to do a review. We'd ordered the onion bhaji as they're delicious however they were cold. We politely called the manager across and explained that the bhajis were cold. His reaction was shocking; he picked up a bhaji and broke it open in front of us and said 'feel it its warm'. It was hardly warm. He also said the mint sauce we'd put on it would make it cold. Honestly I'd only just put the sauce on it! He proceeded to disect the other bhaji. We were absolutely shocked by his behaviour. He finally took them away and brought us some more which were lovely and hot. Why he couldn't have apologised in the first place but to do what he did was absolutely not acceptable. We should have walked out but we were...