Passan's Tea Room & Cocktail Lounge — Restaurant in Nottingham

We visited Passan’s Tea Room & Cocktail Lounge on a Thursday evening to celebrate my husband’s birthday, and we were so impressed from start to finish. We are also customers of the West Bridgeford branch.

The décor is absolutely gorgeous — the William Morris touches and the detailing on the ceiling felt exquisite and expensive, very much in line with the interiors of restaurants like Dishoom. I especially appreciated the details on the curtains — the trim and design were stunning, and I’d genuinely love to know who designed them as they caught my eye immediately. The whole atmosphere is warm and inviting, perfect for a special evening.

We were greeted with such a warm welcome, lots of kind compliments, and seated swiftly. The staff gave helpful recommendations on how many plates to order, which we appreciated. The food itself was absolutely delicious — not overly spicy, which allowed the flavours to shine through beautifully. We were pleasantly surprised by just how good everything tasted.

There was a small issue during our meal when a piece of plastic was found in the yoghurt, but the way the team handled it was exceptional. Both the waitress and the manager (Rory) took it extremely seriously, were very apologetic, removed the dish from the bill, and even gave us a further discount. Mistakes can happen anywhere, but it’s how they are handled that truly matters, and their professionalism left us even more impressed.

We will absolutely be returning — we’d love to try the afternoon tea next time and will be bringing family with us.

A couple of small areas for improvement: the chutneys served with the poppadoms were a little watered down, which dulled the otherwise fantastic flavours. The Mango mocktail could be improved as not enough mango flavour came through. While the restaurant décor is stunning, it would be lovely if the same luxe feel was carried through to the toilets as well such as decor and elevated hand soap or lotions.

Overall, though, this was a wonderful dining experience — thank you to Rory and the whole team for making the evening so memorable! Being Asian/African heritage ourselves we won’t need to travel to Dishoom for an elevated luxe Indian meal or date night.

I really hope the owners find this...

Passan's is a pretty good experience but nowhere near is divine as what we had when we visited the downstairs part of the establishment.

We went in without a reservation and they were able to seat us swiftly. The interior was absolutely lovely to sit in so they've done a really good job of the renovation.

Right away, the biggest thing that could do with an improvement is the service. We were sat with menus for around 15 minutes before anyone came over to take even a drinks order. We ordered all food and drinks together because of this. Then 2 empty glasses were brought over. 15 minutes later they finally brought over some tap water to put in those empty glasses, and about 1 minute later our actual drinks and starter plates arrived. I would instantly bring over the glasses and tap water when people arrive so they're not sat thirsty, it was not a good first impression. Adding 10% automatically for service when it's this poor further adds insult to injury. If you are telling me how much to pay for service it had better be exceptional.

The food was amazing however, apart from the poppadoms, which were served only with 2 chutneys. After experiencing the poppadoms at the deli downstairs that come with 4 chutneys including a delicious and unusual jam I expected the same. However it was just a very spicy green one and a sweeter plum and beetroot one. For £4 I want mango, I want diced onion mix as well, please. The avocado and apple pani puri was delicious, I wish we'd got 2 of these instead of the poppadoms. For mains we had the aubergine and the lamb shank, again really great. All the food ran on the spicy side. It was also pushing it in terms of pricing- starting at £21 for the cheapest veggie mains it's some of the most expensive Indian food I've had. The drinks are also expensive, around £12 for a cocktail, which is average nowadays, but everywhere charging so much for cocktails needs to go away as a trend, they must have...

Food is really good here but the service was terrible which is a real shame

The waitress wasn't able to answer any questions we had about items on the menu (they weren't difficult questions, just "roughly how big are the small plates?") which resulted in us skipping starters. When you're going to have a none standard menu then your staff NEED to be able to answer questions about it

Mains came quick and everyone at the table commented on the great taste and quality of their meals. We had a range of the mains and they were all well presented, good portions and delicious

Unfortunately, service really went downhill after this, it took a long time to order desserts and an even longer time for them to appear. It seemed like for some reason the original waitress wasn't dealing with us anymore

We ordered a drink which never arrived, when we chased it up another waitress put the order in again which also never arrived. When chased up we were told "oh it's because there's none left" - would have been nice to have been told that?

To add insult, after the waitress had told us that drink was no longer available it still wasn't removed from our bill, and yes it was on there twice. What? Was there some hope we'd just not notice and pay twice for a drink we never got and were told we weren't going to get?

I asked for the missing drinks to be removed as well as the service charge, the new bill came but no card machine, after another 10 minutes we just got up and paid on the way out. When the hostess asked if everything was alright with the meal I explained the above and the reply was "oh"

Like I said the food here is good, but there's lots of good Indian food in Nottingham, especially at this price point which isn't too expensive but it's not cheap either so why suffer this service? It's a shame because I'd like to try the other dishes but it's just not worth it for me when there's so many other great...