Saphari — Restaurant in Sandwell

If I could give a lower score, I would. My partner booked this place for a family event for 6 of us, and the food quality, customer service and overall atmosphere at Saphari completely ruined the night - and not even at a reasonable price! The food was not self service, due to COVID. Not a problem, but this was not explained to us when we arrived - that was really poor. There were too few staff and none by much of the food, so you had to wait for someone to come to be served...and were told off if you tried to help yourself. The food was limited and much of the usual selection (soup, crispy duck, and more) was just not available. A whole section of the main course food area was just empty, and the desserts were similarly at about 50% of the available space and usual selection. Tried getting the refillable soft drinks twice, because the first ones were flat and hardly had any flavour, so we sent them back...but the second round/attempt was exactly the same. The curry goat, which is a particular favourite of mine, was all bone and fat. After giving up on the drinks and main courses, and then finding the desserts no better, we decided to make our feelings known to the establishment - which is not something I tend to do. That experience wasn't any better, and whilst we were eventually offered a fairly minor discount against a pretty expensive meal (they aren't cheap, which I wouldn't mind if everything was available) the whole evening was just ruined, and the frustration of talking to the manager and her repeated (and invalid) excuses, just killed it for all of us. We will never go back, and would not recommend this place to anyone we know...unless you really don't like them, want them to spend too much money on a very limited selection of average food, and to have a really poor...

Restaurant empty at 2pm which is understandable, especially being Friday. Main bald manager tried to sit me in a secluded place, why not give me an option where to sit, keeping in mind the restaurant is nearly empty? He told me he will bring 2 glasses for refills, after 7 minutes he was chatting and doing other work. Eventually I had to ask someone else for 2 glasses, I have shown her which table I was sitting at. After a minute, the same waitress approached me to confirm again the number of glasses required.

So nice first impression by new management.

Spanish music, most mains are Indian. I know. Mexican burrito station available which is good.

Food was ok, Flavours which was the previous branding had more options and better quality curries. Tried 2 lamb curries and they were the worst lamb curries I had in UK.

I have to say that one of the bean curries was nice and filling. I enjoyed that one and highly recommend it.

Dessert, a few mini cakes and bigger ones, carrot cakes, nothing that you wouldn't see in any other buffet places.

As you can see in the picture, we had the plates on our tables for 20 minutes, the restaurant was nearly empty and there were plenty of staff that could have collected it. They seemed to walk past 2 tables across without clearing our table.

They were mainly prepping the tables for evening meals.

Overall, I would come back after another round of different buffet places. And I don't go weekly to buffet places, so probably coming back in 2 years. Flavours which was the previous brand under different management had better food and service.

This one has decreased in quality and I will not recommend it as a good buffet for various reasons as explained.

I only recommend it if it's close to you and are too lazy to try a better alternative down town or...

1 is too much for this place honestly!!! I'm not going to lie,but this used to be one of me and my husband's favourites when we were looking for various foods with affordable prices. We always thought the quality wasn't great but we always said that works for that money. On my birthday we all went there: me, my husband, my husband's mum and our 2 daughters.3.5 and 1 year old!!! That night we all started to be sick and have bad diarrhoea!!! Only the 1 year old was fine, as she didn't touch the food. We were unwell for few days in a raw, my older one wasn't getting better. I had to stay with her at home and take unpaid leave. I called the manager to complain and ask for a refund (at least I could have that!) but the answer was that i need to send an email. I sent them the email and they reassured me that their food was fine, as no one else complained. We all 4 had the same symptoms exactly after that meal!! What could be more obvious than that! He told me that we certainly ate something else. That would've been impossible as I was away for the last days with my older one, so we all had different foods before that meal.

2 days later i took our stools go GP as we weren't getting better. The samples tested positive to Campylobacter!! This is a bad bacteria that lives in uncooked chicken. The GP asked for the restaurant details as they need to report these kind of incidents so for the gp my story made sens and actually confirmed that we were all poisoned in this cheap restaurant. I emailed back by asking for a refund again and telling them me and my family were diagnosed with this bacteria but they never replied back! Scammers!!! Putting the public healty at risk and not taking the...