Asha — Restaurant in New Forest

This is the first time in many years I have used Asha Indian Restaurant, but decided to order a take away. Sadly I was extremely disappointed. The mixed starter was in fact the same meat used for the shami kebab and the seekh kebab just shaped differently and extremely salty, do you really think this would not be noticed ? and the onion bajhi was soggy ( thankfully we have an air fryer ). Two mains were ordered dupiaza which had raw onions and a karai chicken tikka, the Karai was in fact satisfactory) the order was made over the phone with a waiting time of 30 mins, but on arrival another 10 minutes, none of this would have been an issue, if in fact the food had been hot. The restaurant was full and the staff extremely polite, however if they can not cope with Take Aways as well as a busy restaurant then maybe they should rethink their strategy. Many of our friends use the restaurant and do say that they are extremely popular for a sit down venue. Our bill total was £35 so not a cheap treat for what we received. We were given complementary popadoms but I would have preferred to have enjoyed our meal.

After my previous review the lovely owner phoned me and apologised for our disappointment. He then invited us to join them for another meal, Courtesy of the restaurant and something I was not expecting. This meal was fabulous with absolute perfection on all counts. I have therefore now allocated 5 stars as I think this is well deserved. The food on this occasion was definitely deserving of 5* and I thank the owner for his kindness and for taking the time to...

The blandest curry I've ever had. Even after adding a lot of salt the rogan josh and dupiaza were still dull and watery and the chicken was big white flavourless chunks with no curry flavour infused. The onions in the dupiaza were so undercooked they tasted like boiled onions and the rogan josh was like a chopped tomato curry an English persin might make at home.

You know that familiar smell you get when you open the container and that magical, unbelievably delicious red oil hits your senses? Well there was none of that. Oh how I craved it. It's as if they're trying to be healthier but haven't made the flavours more robust to counteract the lack of oil, salt and spices. Or maybe they are between chefs? Chefs move around a lot. A new one could make all the difference here....

We visited the new forest for a little mini break and was suggested Asha. When you walk in everyone is very friendly and welcoming. They clearly made great effort to protect their customers from COVID by wearing masks, hand sanitizer station and clearly marked tables abiding by social distancing. The restaurant was lovely but the food was next level!!!

We tried a couple of different dishes one in particular 'Dan's special' which was absolutely amazing. The host went round to all the tables checking in on everything and service was fantastic. We will 100% go out of our way next time to visit Asha again. Shame you don't deliver to Kent 😋

Thank you for a...