Buddha Buddha — Restaurant in Wales

I went to Buddha Buddha for a special evening meal with my parents on our first full day of our holiday in Tenby after we read some very positive online reviews and recommendations. We booked a week in advance before going on holiday.

The staff were not very warm or welcoming and didn’t seem to happy and they were not very approachable. The design of the restaurant isn’t the best, so we ended up being seated at a table in a dark, out of the way corner of the restaurant. Also, the decor in the restaurant isn’t very imaginative.

Mum and I shared a bottle of Prosecco, and I also had a can of soft drink with my meal. We ordered poppadoms and a chutney tray to start with, and naan bread to go with our curry.

The food was very tasty, however. Mum and I ordered a chicken jalfrezi and it came nice and spicy, as we all love spicy food. I also ordered a portion of chips with my curry as I don’t eat much rice, and they were good too. My Dad also enjoyed his food.

They provide peppermints after the meal which is refreshing.

However, the thing that really bothered us was that whilst we were eating and chatting, the staff kept looking over at our table every two minutes, non-verbally indicating that we should hurry up, or asking us whether we had finished yet. They didn’t actually say anything at all rude, or ask us whether we had finished, but it was just the way they kept looking over at us and that way they were passively chivvying us along, almost as if they wanted us to go in there, eat up, and go ASAP. So they wanted to get us fed and watered and out the door, a bit like fast food.

Ironically, I’m visually impaired, so I didn’t pick up on those signals from the staff until they were pointed out to me later.

The other thing which was a bit annoying was that right at the end of our meal, when we were paying the bill, the waiter said to us quietly, but slightly abruptly, cash only, please. I feel that they should have told us this at the beginning, because we weren’t to know that they don’t take cards, as this was our very first time here.

We were only at Buddha Buddha for an hour, before we felt like it was clearly time to go. Normally, when dining out at an Indian restaurant, we are able to take our time and spend at least two hours there.

Top tip: Make sure that you always carry plenty of cash when visiting Buddha Buddha. Especially if you are having a few drinks as well.

I would not recommend this place because the staff made us feel quite uneasy and rushed, and despite the fact that we were polite to them and smiled pleasantly at them, the same as we would everywhere else we go whenever we go out, they never cracked a smile our way and their faces were quite stern...

Firstly we walked in and were ignored by the staff. A waitress saw us come in but decided to clean an empty table rather than take us to our seats. I got bored of waiting at the bar so I went over and asked her for a table for two; the reply - "just sit anywhere", didn't show us to a table or anything.

We sat down and ordered food (poppadoms and chutneys to share for starters, a lamb curry and a vegetable curry for mains, one with rice and one with chips). My girlfriend ordered "half and half" (rice and chips) which initially didn't seem to be a problem, but a few minutes later the waiter came back and said "we can't do half and half sorry, the chef is very particular about portion control" (???). For context for people not from Wales, pretty much EVERY indian restaurant serves half and half unless they are making a point of being very authentic and traditional.

The poppadoms and chutney (£3.80 for the tiniest amounts of raita, lime pickle, amateurishly made onion salad and mango chutney) came swiftly. Literally not more than 5 minutes later the main course arrived, clearly we were still in the middle of eating our starters but that didn't seem to matter.

The vegetable curry was very plain flavoured although fairly spicy (even though my girlfriend only ordered it because the menu said it was mild!). Likewise the lamb curry was quite bland and tasteless. This should come as no surprise as Buddha Buddha is the least authentic indian restaurant in the world (ALL the staff, including the chef, are caucasian, and on the way out we saw into the kitchen and they have stacks of pataks sauce jars. Yes, seriously).

The food was not excessively priced if it was nice restaurant food but it is not, it is made with supermarket sauce jars. I got a bottle of Cobra beer which set me back £6.

If I could give zero stars I would. This restaurant is a complete joke. Avoid it...

Arrived for our booking at 8.30pm was a little shocked at first as our table wasn’t even set up even though it was prebooked. Disgusted at how rude the staff was towards us. We put in a drinks order and shortly after the staff began to shout at each other over who was going to take our order right infront of us. Once we’d put in the order we given our starters and were left waiting for two hours for our plates to be cleared and our food to come to us. We asked for a jug of water but were told to use our glasses that were used for other drinks as they had no glasses even though it wasn’t that busy. During this time we had asked multiple time how long the wait was and was told “two minutes” or “five minutes” but was left waiting for another 20 minutes. We then tried to cancel the order and pay for what we’d eaten to go and he would not allow us to leave and began to put our plates on our tables for us. After being given some dirty plates it was wiped with a tea towel that he carried around the back of his neck and given back to us instead of being cleaned or changed to a clean plate. We got the rice first which then went cold as the curry didn’t arrive until 5 minutes later. We then had our food and had to listen to all the staff shouting and arguing with each other very loudly. Once we’d eaten and went to pay the bill he was shocked when asked for the change. Overall it was not worth going to and I felt very disappointed with our experience and how everything was handled and how awful the service was and how long we had to wait for everything, we did not manage to leave until 11.30pm despite being there at 8.30 for...