Taj Mahal — Restaurant in Wales

We chose this restaurant to eat at on our last night in Pembrokeshire as it had such good reviews. It seems as though they’ve eaten at a completely different restaurant to the one my friends and I were in.

Let me set the scene... It was eight o’clock on a Sunday evening, the restaurant was not particularly busy. We waited over half an hour for our orders to be taken and then another hour for for our food to arrive. Two tables were seated after us and had their food before we had even ordered. We had our menus clearly closed on the table, which I believe to be the correct etiquette to show your waiter you are ready to place your order.

The food, when it arrived, was utterly atrocious. I’ve eaten in some pretty questionable places but I can honestly say this meal was one of the worst. It had clearly just been re-heated in the microwave.We ordered an array of different dishes and they all tasted the same apart from the Tarka Daal which had a lovely burnt chemical taste to it. They didn’t have the type of rice (PLAIN BOILED RICE!) that we had ordered so just bought a completely different dish over and didn’t even ask us or apologise.

As a group we made the decision to bring up a few issues with a man we assumed was the manager. Who was just totally to disrespectful to my female friend. She simply asked him if he was writing up her bill and in a patronising, sarcastic tone replied “no, I’m writing you a love letter”. We then asked for money off our bill as we didn’t think we should have to pay for food that was so bad and we had obviously barely eaten any of our meal. He took £6 and didn’t apologise just made it seem as though we were the ones in the wrong. An apology for bad service and bad food would have gone a long way but instead we got an extremely defensive response and no apology.

I felt the need to post about it here because clearly we weren’t being listened to in the restaurant and I wouldn’t want anyone else to spend their hard earned money in...

Waited a week now for some response after giving Taj Mahal an opportunity to address my poor meal last week, even rang a second time to chase feedback...nothing. Too many times we are quick to slate companies on reviews and I wanted to be fair on the basis of " If you enjoy our food, tell others and if not tell us" We spent £34 for two of us... the usual kind of food Our pickle tray only had 3 pots of the same dip... a pink sauce...no lime,mango or onion cucumber. The onion bhaji starter (4 small balls) was really the worst ever. old tough and stale and to add insult to injury there was another one in the measly mixed grill starter that also contained 2 chicken and 2 lamb tikka pieces. The Madras curry I had was very watery and nothing other than this runny sauce and pieces of tikka. My wife's Lamb saag was fine at best but she had already refused any based on the fact that the bahjis were so bad she had been put off anything else. The cheese and keema nan was also bad... Black burnt cinders that crunched in your teeth and really had no flavour. After my first call back on the same night In a typically British apologetic conversation I said that I would be happy to drive back to show them my food and they explained it was not necessary and that they had a different tandoori chef on.... I didn't ask for a refund but suggested maybe a credit note towards a replacement for the bad items so that we may try another time.... sadly no reply has meant...

Lovely food, shame about the service. We arrived at 17:06 for a 17:30 booking to be told we were too early which is fair enough as they were still opening up. When we returned at 17:30 we informed the man we were 6 people (our original booking had been for up to 8) he made quite the fuss as he thought it was for five of us. When we went into the restaurant, there were no tables set for five peoplre, only 4 or 6, which confused us... The Chap in charge wasn't very friendly and made us feel like we were a total invconvenience, snapping at us that he'd need the table back by 7. The food however was really good, nice authentic curry in classic silver trays. I had a chicken tikka biryani with peshwari nan and chips and it was as good as any I've had. The popandoms were warm and fresh also. We finished up by half 6 to be sure to give the table back for 7 only to end up waiting alnost 30 mins for the bill... We paid promptly when the waitress arrived only for the Chap in charge to come over and rudely tell us we should be gone by now it's gone 7. Maybe if you'd taken some time to actually attend our table (1 of 3 with people on) out of atleast 6 or 7, Then You would have had the table by 7 when you wanted. Food was 4 out of 5 Service 3 at best. Have a word with the guy in charge, seemed a bit highly...