Essence at The Pantiles by Atul Kochhar — Restaurant in Tunbridge Wells

OK Constructive Criticism.

We've eaten twice since the opening night, once as a couple and the other with friends.(My wife is always keen to try new restaurants!) The first occasion was just the two of us on opening night, food very good, service very poor, which we put down originally to opening teething troubles( more below). Secondly with four of us, and given we had had a discussion with the manager the first time, and we were recognised on returning, thought things would be better. Service was better but still lacking, but food was not as good. SERVICE ISSUES The staff are not trained with regard to the menu, nor are aware of which dish is which when delivering to the table. We had to ask for menus on our first visit, and took 20 mins to bring a card machine. If a member of staff is responsible for a section, they need to be very aware of what's going on, we and other diners spent way to long waving arms at staff who didn't pick up on this! Food service is incredibly slow, 2 hours before our mains arrived. FOOD ISSUES Overall, we thought the food good, but not great, particularly given the price point. Main issue is timing, and we and many have commented that this is a problem. GENERAL ISSUES The tables for 2 are WAY too close together, which is a common complaint, with barely a foot between them. Our drinks and starter the first night went to completely the wrong table, and it seemed like our table was in the Bermuda triangle ! Is there a problem with your system? The Gents toilet is positively dangerous. The door opens inwards and will quite easily hit people standing at the urinal, and definitely will hit a person using the hand dryer. I think this is a lawsuit waiting to happen! The hand dryers in both loos are extremely noisy( think aircraft taking off) and can be heard across most of the restaurant. I would recommend having the door swing outwards and change the hand dryers( and ideally add cloth towels as an option). Pedant me, asked to round the reasonably significant bill down to whole numbers, which would have knocked about 79p off the 12.5% service charge, which I was told wasn't possible on the system, and insisted the only option was to remove the entire service charge, which I did on a point of principle, and we left cash instead. Surely if a customer wanted to pay a 10% service charge for whatever reason, instead of 12.5%, or wanted to pay more, the system should allow for this without problem?

Atul, not sure if you ever read these reviews, but you've been running restaurants for a while, and based on our experiences, you would struggle to get even one AA Rosette currently, let alone a Michelin star. All of these issues can be easily remedied, but some shouldn't have existed at all, particularly the service issues, easily solved with better training before opening....

I’m lucky enough to eat out quite a lot, but apart from a brief business trip to Mumbai and eating once at Benares, when Atul Kochhar was there, my experience of Indian food is very limited so I have to admit I’m no expert. To try Essence my wife and I took six of our young relatives for dinner. It was Monday and the restaurant had only recently opened, so we expected it to be quiet and perhaps, still finding its way (as some other early reviews have reported), but the place was buzzing with plenty of customers and helpful, friendly staff. We all ordered from the drinks menu and had a mixture of cocktails and soft drinks. A selection of chutneys and breads was provided for the table and we each chose a starter, main and dessert from the a la carte menu. At the suggestion of the waiter, we ordered three bowls of rice and some naan bread knowing that we could order more if required. Everyone carried on with their ad-hoc selection of drinks and some coffees to follow. Service was professional, non-intrusive and a glance in the direction of any of the staff resulted in instant attention. Everything we had to eat and drink was really very good, very plentiful and despite one of our group (married to someone from that part of the world!) saying beforehand, that they did not like “Indian Food”, said that she really enjoyed it. The only problem encountered, was when I ordered a Kulfi which resulted in a cup of coffee being delivered, obviously my mis pronunciation, or the surprise of someone ordering and Indian ice cream. So: Great food, great drink, great service, great buzz and really nice place. And most of all we all had a good...

We had gone for a Valentine's lunch on 13th as we were kid free! However, despite the website advertising lunch and dinner service for the Valentine's menu on 13th and 14th, it was not available which was really disappointing as we'd been looking forward to it. We weren't offered an apology or any compensation for their error!

Restaurant decor was lovely but the table arrangements weren't well thought out for ambience. We were stacked in a row of twos with only about 1ft between us and the next table. Needless to say, not romantic as we'd hoped, especially sitting next to a father and son (not their fault!).

Waiting staff were nice but it didn't feel like a fine dining service. Had to ask twice for drinks, tables were too small to fit all the dishes, they walked past the tables several times with food and none of them knew which of us had ordered which dish which you often get with better trained staff. I don't blame them, but the management needs to pay more attention to the little things.

One of our desserts had sold out but we weren't told about it until they delivered the other one, so we were left waiting with one dessert whilst they prepared the replacement.

When we asked for the bill, the server leaned over two tables to pass it and passed it to the female, not being sexist but a little unconventional, and when the card machine was abruptly brought over we weren't even asked if we were ready to pay or how we'd like to pay, it was just shoved at us.

Food was lovely and it is newly opened so some tweaks would make it better. Hand driers were far too loud...