Spice Village — Restaurant in Portsmouth

This is the 4th year in a row me and my family have visited for our Christmas meal. We visit here a few times a year with different groups of, people, friends and even clients. It kills me to say this, but it's gone down hill recently.

Let's start with the good. The staff. Most (not all) most are amazing, friendly, welcoming and we always have a good laught. Again that is most of them, but some are dismissive, short with you and at times it comes across rude. It's always clean, tidy and gives you that homely feeling. Unfortunately tonight that's all the good I can say.

So we arrived after booking a table of 6, we got offered a table for 4. They looked confused when we explained we booked for 6 not 4. Shown to our table, ordered drinks and they arrived not long after.

A few minutes later our order was taken, then the regular poppadoms and chutneys arrived right after.....then we waited, and waited and waited. The whole time other tables round us, came got their food, finished and left. 20-30 take out orderes served and still we waited and waited. Almost an hour and 1/2 later our food arrived. Well half of it arrived, we still had to wait for some of the side dishes to come. I could see from the dried layer of food on top of each dish, it had been sat around for a while. I picked up my bowl to dish out my food and start to eat, only to relise it was cold. Checked my daughters food, hers was cold as well. The chips where soggy, rice was stuck together due to being sat round.

My mother in law (who's not a huge eater) order some extra poppadoms and chutneys as her meal, these didn't arrive till we had all finished and had to remind them 3 times she had ordered them. We asked multiple times for more drinks, that we also had to chase for.

All in all just not how we expected to send out family Christmas meal.

This isn't the first below par experience we have had here recently, but unfortunately I think it will...

Last night was the last time I will visit. We have been a couple of times before, and the service was really poor, but we had left it for so long, and the place is still going, so we thought we'd give it another chance.

It was loud last night, the left hand side of the restaurant was full of people shouting at each other, which is sort of understandable because its Christmas party season. We sat on the right hand of the restaurant and it was quieter. Our table wasn't ready, and they had to separate two and make them up. Again, busy time of year, so understandable.

From experience, we know that if you want to eat, you have to grab their attention, and that worked to an extent, but the service was still chaotic. Getting drinks was difficult, we had no cutlery, even with starters sitting in front of us and had to ask for it. We had to ask for someone to take our drinks orders, we had to chase the papadams that we ordered and they came after the starters.

The food is good, not wonderful, but not bad, but the service is something else. Every part of the meal had to be chased, drinks didn't arrive unless we chased, some things came, some didn't.

The prawns were iffy and made one of us ill later.

Everything moved at a glacial pace. It was chaos. It's handy, because we live in Drayton and you can walk home, but it's not worth it. I can't imagine what it must be like to work there and to go through that every night and I'm staggered that they stay in business. They haven't improved since they opened.

We...

How this place is still in business is beyond me?? It's shambolic, they must be haemorrhaging or at least losing money like its actually a key part of their business strategy.

Table booked a week prior for a table of 10. Arrived and they looked clueless like they werent expecting us.

They hastily put some tables together... Facing a wall!!!

Next up they take our order and after 90 minutes we still had only had our poppadoms (1 each) and 1 round of drinks it took 3x to get right.

In that 90 minutes I asked twice for more drinks none of which happened.

At the 2 hour mark I said we were leaving and was told food was just about to come out. At the 2.5 hr mark still no food and our next round of drinks was still being sorted (and arrived wrong).

Told to cancel the order and left at the 3 hour mark!

The worrying thing was the apathy. There was zero shock, attempt to keep us and it looked like this was just a standard regular occurence and they were used to it.

Several other parties also walks outs during our stay, one of which had been in since 6 and still hadn't had there starters 3.5 hrs later!!

Can't comment on the food however no curry even if best in the world is worth sitting for nearly 4 for (they don't even ply you with drink to distract you)!

Avoid unless blessed with infinite patience and vast amounts of time to kill waiting for food that may or may not arrive before...