Kashmir Cottage — Restaurant in Sandwell

I’m a front line nurse/key worker at a local hospital. After a 12 hour shift I was too tired to cook and ordered a takeaway just before they were shutting on a Tuesday. Their Driver called me to come outside saying he was there. I came outside, no one there???? I rang up the restaurant after 5min waiting outside who in turn rang the driver. Upon returning to me, the restaurant guy got very attitudey after over hearing my partner in the background saying they will we reject the food if cold. For some reason, he did not like that. As if we were NOT allowed to reject the food, we had NO RIGHT to reject the food and how about he just cancels the food right now? I tried to calmly explain how I’m a key worker, need my food, I haven’t prepared any dinner, it’s after 11pm & all supermarkets have shut blah blah - but MID SENTENCE, he ended the call & I immediately received an Uber Eats notification saying my order had been cancelled. I quickly ran outside hoping to find the delivery guy & pay him cash but still, no where to been seen. DISGUSTING treatment from a so called professional business leaving me without food after most restaurants & supermarkets are now closed. All because he overheard my partner saying we ain’t paying for cold food after the driver lied saying he was outside when he wasn’t, having me stand outside at 11pm; actually NEVER arriving. If you are overwhelmed at a job that you cannot handle then I don’t think you should be working with customers face-to-face or over the phone. I get extremely busy on the wards with patients who are a lot to handle but I never let it affect me and I do my job with grace and poise. This gentleman on the phone who spoke to me with such a disgusting attitude needs to be retrained but at least, spoken to by his superiors. I would not use this restaurant because if he has an attitude like this, God knows what he’s doing...

Ordered a lamb dhansak and vegetable special and fried rice. I once read that any restaurant that makes lamb dhansak with pineapple is not making it in an authentic way. Well there was no pineapple mentioned on the menu and thankfully there was no pineapple to be found in the dish itself. This I thought was a good sign, I hoped that it would be nicer than from other restaurants and it certainly surpassed my expectations. The flavour of this dhansak was like none I'd had before. I pick apart and criticise everything I eat from restaurants and I can honestly say that I could find no fault; this dish was perfect. At first a very pleasing sweet and sour flavour hit my tastebuds; neither too sweet nor too sour but just right. Then, a satisfying warmth then tided over me. The heat from the chilli was challenging but not overpowering. The lamb was tender, the lentils the perfect texture - neither hard nor soggy, just the right amount of bite. The dish seemed to contain just the right amount of salt - enough to bolster the flavour but not so much as to make it taste salty. This dish far surpassed any that I have sampled from other restaurants in Bearwood and in fact I am now quite upset that I've failed to go to Kashmir Cottage in the seven years that I've lived here, despite walking past numerous times. The only criticism I could make was to the vegetable special, which, while very tasty, contained cauliflower which was a little bit overdone. Aside from that, I was very happy with the meal and will certainly be visiting Kashmir Cottage...

I have lived in Bearwood for 2 years now and always my go to Indian restaurant is Kasmir Cottage

Ordered today food arrived at my house and it was awful, korma was insipid, usually a thick creamy texture, naan breads were raw in the middle, pilau rice was basically a large clump of stodge. As I was v disappointed and a loyal customer I called them explained my issues and was greeted with someone I the phone who literally didn't care a jot. He has my money already and thats obviously all he is interested in!

Nobody is perfect, a simple apology would have gone a long way but no, not even interested in that.

Will not be going back under any circumstances, don't know if they have a new owner or chef but having memtioned how bad the food was in my local community Facebook group, instantly had more than 20 replies saying that they had similar experiences with the food from Kasmir Cottage and they too would not be going there again, all saying a similar thing 'used to be guaranteed great food' unfortunately not...