Chilli Bar & Kitchen, St Albans — Restaurant in St Albans

Worst restaurant experience ever. We turned up in a group of 5 rather than 8 (a few ppl had dropped out at v short notice) and were berated by the hostile staff as they'd had to "turn ppl away" cos they thought they had a booking for more ppl. BUT our table wasn't even ready at time we booked so we had to wait around for 20 mins (no apology). We ordered drinks at the bar and waited for 5 mins only for the barman (who we had ordered from) to come over to ask if we were going to order drinks. He rudely denied that we had already ordered. When we were eventually seated we had to wait 1 hr 15 mins for our food to arrive after we had ordered and it wasn't worth the wait - it was average at best. We had been told that our food was due to be with us in "ten minutes" roughly every ten minutes during that time. Basically we had been in the place for 1hr 45 mins before our mains arrived. No apology then either. In the end they gave us a round of drinks for free when we complained for the umpteenth time, but it kinda ruined the evening. You shouldn't spend an evening at a restaurant seething with anger, especially on a special occasion. In short, I've never experienced service as bad as this anywhere before - you shouldn't be made to feel that you're inconveniencing a restaurant by booking a table and eating their food. It could have been worse, though - friends of ours who were there at the same time had to wait 2 hrs for their meals. Never again, especially when there are so many better curry houses within...

A friend fancied a curry, so we thought we'd give Chilli Bar and Kitchen a run out. It was a Monday night, so quiet and lacking atmosphere. The service was chaotic, we were asked by 3 different, unenthusiastic waiters if we had ordered drinks. We each had a main only, with rice, naan, dal and salad. Not that tasty, but we were fed. What I was most disappointed about was when we asked the waiter for the bill a totally different guy that we hadn't seen all evening arrived to take our payment. As I was giving him the tip in cash I felt fairly certain that the waiter(s) who had served us would...

I had a takeaway. The Biryani, an aromatic dish, was barely spiced. There was v e r y little lamb in it. The curry which came with it was bland and again barely spiced. The vegetable dish, Niramish, was greasy, bland and tasted of stewed vegetables. The pitifully small Mixed Grill starter, Tikka, at £8.50, had two small mouthful sized pieces of chicken, two small mouthful sized pieces of lamb and a sheikh kebab 10cm long and so hollow it was a mouthful and the tiny salad had no lemon.

This has to have be the most overpriced poor quality food I...