The Spice Restaurant — Restaurant in Torridge District

Oh dear! Unfortunately we, a party of 5, had a very poor experience at The Spice Restaurant in Bideford. Our background is that we have recently moved to Devon and love to eat Indian/Bangladeshi/Nepalese food so had picked The Spice as our first local experience.

Our booking was for 7.30pm on a Saturday night. We arrived about 10 minutes early and were promptly seated in the restaurant which was about 1/4 full (this was as busy as it got). Menus given, drinks were ordered and soon received.

Our first disappointment was the house red wine, an average cost but it truly tasted like Ribena, not nasty but if I were the owner it would not be a wine I would choose to represent my restaurant with.

So after 10-15 minutes contemplating the menu decisions had been made and our order of 12 dishes + naan breads were placed.

This is where the second disappointment came in. We waited, and waited, and waited. A table of two arrived, sat, ordered, ate and paid but still we had no food. Many, many online and take away orders went out the door while we still waited. At no point did any of the staff approach us to apologise for the delay and after 1hr 15mins we asked the staff what the problem was. An apology was received saying that they had been very busy with takeaway orders and a promise that the food would be delivered soon.

The third disappointment was when the food eventually arrived. The waiter who delivered our food incorrectly labelled/described 80% of the food he placed on the table. He delivered two Peshwari naan breads and one plain naan where the actual order was for one Peshwari and one garlic naan. These naan breads were also the smallest I have ever seen delivered to a table in a restaurant. A portion of boiled rice was delivered instead of pilau rice. The Paneer Tikka was tasteless and was unlikely to have seen the inside of a tandoor oven as described on the menu. A portion of Chicken Madras was missed and after questioning where it was was finally delivered 10 minutes later. When it did arrive it contained just 5 bite sized pieces of chicken, very disappointing! A portion of Saag Bhaji was never actually received but by this time we were just wanting to draw a line under the whole 'Spice' experience.

The manager/owner (Naz?) came to apologise and offered to give our wine for free (which we accepted) but he seemed almost oblivious to the fact that we were there in person, sitting at his table in his restaurant ordering his alcohol (always a good profit margin) and his food preferring instead to prioritise his takeaway orders.

Will we be going back... Unlikely, instead we will try the other local Indian restaurants and if they are good we will happily consign our memory of the Spice restaurant to the lessons learned portion of our brain.

One final thought, when we arrived we noticed the sign on the outside of the building had the 'S' missing (so it reads 'The pice'). If this were your restaurant would this not be considered an urgent repair? First...

This refers to takeaway only, during Covid restrictions. My sister ordered online. The delivery time given was 17:29 More than 30 minutes after that, and with no delivery yet, she rang up. She got a rather offhand response saying they didn’t start cooking until 17:30 and the food would arrive between 6 and 7. Not good. When it arrived and she was unpacking it, she was puzzled that one of my items was missing. They were hieroglyphics on some of the containers, but extremely hard to puzzle out. I had ordered Saag aloo, not being too sure what it was, and Lamb curry with rice. And decided that it was the Saag aloo that was missing. My sister rang up to complain and was told by the man she spoke to that that was definitely in, as he had done it himself. It turned out that the container of what I thought was my curry was indeed Saag aloo (basically potato and spinach). There was no curry at all. So that main part of my meal was changed for but not provided! My mother and sister had starters of ‘large’ butterfly prawns in crispy batter. These were extremely unsatisfactory, chewy and lacking flavour, with no discernible prawn apart from the tail. My sister was convinced they were yesterday’s warmed up. They were thrown out for the dog. The other food items were passable, but not great. This was a birthday meal, and the Spice let us down very badly. Never again. Definitely NOT...

Unwelcoming atmosphere and felt like we were interrupting the waiter from watching TV.

From the outside the place looks good. We walked in the restaurant and the staff was slow to serve us dispite us being the only customers in. We were shown to our table which we were happy with. We ordered poppadoms, they were served without sauces when I asked we were told it would be an extra cost, not too much money but good service at an Indian restaurant would provide these. Our food arrived in good timing. The curry was luke warm, and was okay, nothing special quite bland. While eating the waiter turned the music off and put the TV on loud to watch, he wasn't really responsive in asking us if we were required anything. We did receive a check back eventually. The staff were also being very loud in the kitchen. In all, it wasn't a great experience, very poor customer service. I wouldn't recommend this place. We would have still expected great customer service dispite being the only customers. We wish we would have eaten...