Giggling Squid - Reigate — Restaurant in Reigate and Banstead

Food 4/5 service 1/5

We walked in and the manager greeted us. Asked if we had allergies or intolerances. I said yes to the second, asked for the menu and was told they don't have a menu but it's done by QR code. Fine, I said, I'll check it out (and I'd already reviewed the menu in advance, and knew what options I had). The manager then demanded, actually demanded, that he know about what it was as "he needs to know".

We were then seated and after that, did not see that manager for the rest of the night. I was told to view the allergen menu via their QR code. But the restaurant has no signal and no WiFi. The waitress went to check this, then came back and told us to "select no milk from the menu". Great, but with no signal or WiFi I couldn't access it at all. They struggled to understand that the QR code was sending me to a website. I had viewed the allergen menu earlier, so had a few options I'd seen which were suitable so that worked out. But the restaurant, despite "needing to know my intolerance" was absolutely zero help or care about it. If it was an allergy, I'd have walked out.

There was one woman serving a busy restaurant. A few tables left and the waitress spent ages clearing and cleaning tables right next to us long after we'd finished our mains. Having also finished drinks, we had to call her over to ask for the dessert menu. Ten minutes later, we called her over again to ask for the bill. We were close to asking that they remove the service charge from the bill because it was so poor, but it possibly goes to the kitchen so we left it.

Let's talk positives!

Great food:

Starters, all good

Chicken satay Duck spring rolls Salmon one bite (a little sickly after 4, the sauce covering the salmon is sickly)

Mains

Dish not available Lamb massaman

Seafood curry, unfortunately fish was very overcooked

Ribs, egg rice,.great Salmon Penang, egg rice, great

Food overall was great. Service...

We walked in to giggling squid Reigate at around 9.40pm, the restaurant's last orders is at 10.30pm. The manager seated us with her welcoming statement... "the kitchen closes at 10.30pm so you must order quickly and all food will come together, starter and mains, understand". My understanding of what the manager was saying was ; we don't really want your custom at this time in the evening so order and eat quickly so me and the staff can go home, understand!!

Not the best welcome to any restaurant! She then took our order for starters and repeated that very same line again for a second time. She was so obsessed with us ordering and getting out quickly she got the order wrong and we received the wrong starters!

The same was repeated with the mains, ordered by another member of staff who also put through the wrong dish on the till, rushing to get us out of the restaurant so they could go home or on to whatever was more important than running the restaurant!

When we said our main was wrong, the kitchen was already closed so they could not replace it. Instead they argued and presented the bill whilst we were still eating with the dish taken off. No offer was made to cook the dish we had ordered and absolutely no chance of dessert!

This type of service is sadly becoming normal in chain restaurants like giggling squid. As we finished our mains, staff including the chef were sitting drinking wine and cocktails in the bar next to us, waiting for us to go, showing the customer is no longer king!

The food we did get was okay although all the seafood was over cooked, dry and tough and the mussels had no flavour and were luke warm.

The whole experience was a real shame, as their Guildford branch put on a good performance when we visited a few months ago. What a let down for the...

Takeaway review: We had a really poor experience with this food when we ordered yesterday.

The delivery time estimated was far shorter than the tracking once the order was completed, the boxes which the food came in crumpled and split, spilling sauce all over the deliverer's bag and wasting our dinner, the prawn crackers appear to be standard shop-bought and released a repulsive smell when the packet was opened, the sticky rice was the worst we've ever had and seemed to have been put in a bag and microwaved to rubber, the coconut rice was clearly just Jasmine rice with some coconut and sesame seeds put on top (so was plain once you ate the very top part) and the curry dishes were just very... Medium.

Nothing like we expected after having the food at the venue previously, even accounting for the differences when having takeaway. I do not understand why the restaurant chooses large, fragile, non-sealed food boxes when there are so many options which seal perfectly (whether you want compostable or not). Also, if you're going for the environmental angle (unsure, boxes don't appear to be recyclable) then covering everything in cling film which STILL leaks defeats the object entirely. If you're looking for recommendations on actually decent, eco-friendly food boxes, get Vegware.

The only reason this has a second star is because the sticky chicken was great, and thanks to the lack of sauce it couldn't leak everywhere.

So so...