Akaya Lounge — Restaurant in Slough

Visited on Eid day so was fully expecting a busy restaurant. Having worked in the hospitality industry for 6 years, I can truly understand the pressures faced by front of house staff during busy times. However, the service we received was dreadful!

To get one thing out of the way, the bbq stuff was very good, especially the Adana Kebab. The Chicken Karachi was below par while the kids meal and sides ( we had fish fingers and cheese sticks) were terrible! The kids couldn’t eat the fish fingers and one bite told me why. Clearly fried from frozen and taken out of the oil in haste. Soggy, undercooked and tasted of nothing.

To get the other thing out of the way, the atmosphere was pretty good. The singer was amazing and added a lot of value to our experience. Only for that to be taken away by the service. And then some.

So here are some of the things we experienced:

Ordering process was fine. The gentleman was knowledgeable and helpful. We had one napkin per person and despite requests for more, none were provided. It was like we were on a quota! We were a party of 11 and all dishes were brought out to one end of the table and pretty much slammed down before the server turned away to do something else. Not even an attempt was made to ask who the individual orders were for or lay the platters in the middle of the tables. The BBQ platter we ordered was ‘for 4-6 people’. It comes out on this mini grill with a live lump of coal which is cool and all but again, it was left at the corner of a table for us to figure out how to manage from there on in. The worst part was that a lot of meat was crammed onto the grill so you had to find what you wanted without moving, nay, dropping some other pieces. Still worse, the smoking hot grill came without a pair of tongs. Asked for one, not provided. a genuine effort was required to catch the attention of someone to get our drinks order. We were 3 people in when a female employee interrupted the gentleman taking the order and decided she would do it. Starting from the beginning. The table we sat at had a piece of Chicken Tikka on the floor and the table itself hadn’t been cleaned since the previous patron had left. A lot of effort had to be made to get the attention of staff. Be it additional items, more drinks or miscellaneous items. Similar to napkins, asked twice for a drinking straw which never came so eventually had to go and get one ourselves. Same thing happened with the bill. Asked for it and was not provided. After a few minutes, looked around to find the staff member in an animated discussion with the Kitchen staff. Went to the counter and paid it ourselves.

So while we had low expectations from a service perspective, the staff at this place managed to significantly exceed them!...

Hair hair hair. Don't believe the fake reviews naming the various members of staff. We had a disappointing experience with awful service from Kashish.

We visited as a group of 11 which included 5 young children. On a hot summers day, prior to ordering drinks we asked for some tap water to begin with and were told this was not provided only bottled water which needed to be purchased.

After ordering a variety of dishes the wait began. To cut a long story short, we waited nearly an hour for food and when the food did arrive, more than half the order was missing. While some of the adults food had arrived, none of the children's food, 2 main dishes and various sides were nowhere to be seen. We asked Kashish to check with the kitchen as to how long they would take and after acknowledging us, she just went about her business serving other people and not letting us know when the food would arrive.

5-10 mins later we asked a male waiter fir an update on our remaining food and were assured it would come out quickly. Which it did not. Eventually the children's food arrived, followed 5 mins later by the chops we had ordered. However we were still missing a chapli kebab. This is nearly 25-30 mins after the first lot of food had arrived and by which time they were half cold. When the chapli kebab did arrive, only 1 was served and was followed by a second another few mins later.

As we proceeded to eat our long awaited food, my spouse found a long light brown hair in the lamb biriyani. Disgusted, we called Kashish and told her about the hair. She simply said "sorry", plucked the hair from my hand, went to the kitchen for 30 seconds and then went about her job. There were no further apologies, no offer to replace the biriyani, nothing. Annoyed, I got up and went to the bar where I asked to speak to the manager. He handled the situation better, profusely apologising but unwilling to accept the hair came from his kitchen despite it being buried inside the biriyani.

The food here tastes good but the service is severely lacking and I...

Not often we go out for shisha but whenever we have it's usually average shisha and even more rare to have good food. Akaya sets it all straight.

Like most shisha spots a nice and lively interior but we here for shisha and food, so how was it?

Very impressive.

Let me start with those Dynamite King Prawns. Biggest i've ever seen and perhaps the best. They were so big and heavy they just broke apart when i picked them up - this is a must try! Masala fish was also battered so well, this was ace too.

Mixed Turkish grill. Excellent and not a quick attempt to serve turkish food. This was more like the real deal and something you'd find in a proper turkish spot. The lamb shops had a bit of a twist and this made it even better. Great too for sharing.

Both the chicken karahi and butter chicken were decent. If you're craving this, it'll just about satisfy but this wasn't like the proper desi way i'd like. I will say the meat quality was very good, chicken was so soft.

Even their chinese menu has good options - we got the prawn chowmein and this was nicee. Past the nicely presented plate was a dish that didn't disappoint and one we'd order again too!

Good selection of flavours for chicken wings. Properly battered and sauces had a kick to them. Buffalo probably the best from em all.

Shisha! We got the Savacco shisha with Black Mamba flavour. Very good - the flavour didn't get harsh even after 90 min of smoking and the smoke thickness was there. Good service meant they replaced the coals without us even asking. We really enjoyed this and this is one of the much better shishas we've tried. Not bad either at £30 plus you can share between a group of 4.

Overall if you want good shisha and food - this is it! Other spots i've been to always disappoint in at least one of the two departments

Taste: 7.9, Quality:...