Popadoms — Restaurant in Newport

I do a lot of food reviews and my opinions are held in high regard, as a well travelled man and a extremely culturally experienced man who as a half Indian, half Russian wife I understand this cuisine very well, as my childs diet consists of 50% of this type of food and mine about 20% due to my hobby which requires and structured diet plan. I am also a foodie and I have travelled a lot which means I have had the pleasure of eating in a lot of different high quality restaurants and experiencing the best of the best as well as my Indian / Asian family and friends home cooked foods also and I don't eat budget food at all, its not my style.

My honest review out of 10 for this restaurant, with 10 being top quality, 5 being basic average and with 0 being terrible, with kindness would be approximately 4.5 out of 10.

My chicken biryani was not spiced at all it was just like very plain flavoured yellow rice with chicken in there, akin to bodybuilding diet food dry and bland, which is something I am very used to, so when I eat out I expect my taste buds to be blown away and this was far from that, my bhuna sauce was decent but the vegetables in it was undercooked and to crunchy not soft and delicate and simmered properly but the overall flavour of the bhuna sauce was very decent, the Bombay potatoes had no zing or spice to them and was overly starchy and undercooked and my keema nann was only delicious but where it actually had meat which was about 35% of the nann.

I was told that the meal would take 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes to be delivered which is acceptable if its being prepared and cooked properly with dispatching and delivery times however it got here after 45 minutes so I at least thought the meal would be hot, however it was luke warm at best bordering on the cold, another massive disappointment as I only live 4 minutes away by foot and about the same by vehicle as you can not drive through the city centre.

The one plus side which I have to give is the servings was all generous and there was plenty of chicken in the biryani but apart from that and a decent taste on a slightly uncooked bhuna sauce and a nice but not fairly pack keema nann bread it was not that special at all.

People say the staff were nice and friendly and while that may'be the case the review is about the quality of the food as your paying your hard earned money for it, you expect the staff to be friendly thats just a given and nothing to have to feel grateful about.

I won't buy again from here for a very long time as this...

Sadly, we chose 'Popadoms' to order a takeaway for this evening.

We spent £60 on food and waited 90-minutes for cold food to be delivered with missing items! It's a Saturday night, so the delivery time is to be expected, less so the cold food and the below...

I rang the restaurant and they couldn't be any less interested, even when speaking to the manager. Getting an apology was like trying to get blood from a stone.

We waited a further 30-minutes for the missing items to be delivered (2 hours total waiting time).

I ordered a vegetarian pasanda (don't judge me!), this arrived on delivery 1 ....following delivery 2 (the missing items) I noticed they added chicken at no extra charge which is lovely but I'm actually a vegetarian! Apparently, the person who took the order "misunderstood", despite a full conversation on the vegetarian pasanda not being on the menu but they could make it ...now trying to make excuses, lie, and shift the blame onto me.

I wouldn't order from them again. It seems they are taking their high ratings for granted to guarantee orders yet part-delivering a sub-standard service.

They returned £25 for my meal items, as priced on the menu. The delivery guy was lovely on all 3 ocassions; he wouldn't even accept my tip given our poor experience. He was very polite, friendly, and apologetic.

The food was OK, despite being microwaved, but the overall experience a fail!

Things go wrong and items can be missed, it's human error, but the customer service around this is key, and that was...

So where do I start. Well both myself and my wife got married last weekend and we are both huge lovers of curry, so we figured why not have a curry for our wedding breakfast! After speaking to one of our regular curry houses near Abergavenny, we were recommended to Waseem at Pappadoms, as they also specialise in catering for large events and weddings.

From the first conversation with Waseem he made us feel so at ease. We told him he would need enough for around 80 guests, which his response was "I normally do weddings with hundreds sometimes thousands of guests! So yours will be no trouble at all."

Over the following months he kept in touch and we met to try the food in the weeks leading up to the big day. Waseem even came up to the venue to meet us so we could run through how and where the food would be served. He made us feel so at ease on the day, arrived on time, provided staff to help serve, and above all the food was AMAZING! All of our guests commented on how great the curry was and many went back for seconds (and thirds). He even arranged for a few deserts which also went down a treat.

He even helped clean up and left us all the left over curry which means no takeaways for our family for the next few months! We can't thank the team at popadoms enough for their amazing service and we will deffiently be stopping by for more takeaways when we are down at the families place in Newport. (When the leftovers run...