Thariks Tandoori — Restaurant in West Devon

I'm pretty clued up about Asian cuisine having tasted all the different cooking styles throughout the UK and many other places abroad. My least favourite is the most common in Britain, Bangla Deshi, which doesn't hold a candle to genuine Pakistani cooking. Nevertheless visiting a small town like Tavistock in Devon, beggars couldn't be choosers. What an unbelievable experience visiting this restaurant was however.

My partner orders Chicken Tikka Masala, I order Achar Chicken Tikka with side orders of rice and a vegetable dish. So along comes the two main courses and I immediately didn't like the look of the Tikka Masala and tasted it. I thought I was going to throw up it was so sweet it tasted of nothing but coconut and sugar. My partner refused to eat it.

A complaint to the waiter returned an explanation that the chef makes it like that all the time and we were offered something else. I suggested Chicken Tikka Balti since that might be a bit more savoury at least. The chef rushed one out. Always a bad idea. It was incredibly bland and still had an unpleasant sweetish after taste. My Achar dish was edible but very ordinary.

Settling for what we had, we ate the meal. Having just put down our cutlery we were confronted by the chef no less, who decided to remonstrate with us on the floor of the busy restaurant at the top of his voice like some Indian Basil Fawlty. No one had complained about his food before apparently. I was gobsmacked by this rant and asked to see the manager. The irate chef then informed me he was the manager and resumed the angry defence of his food. I won't go into any further gory details, except to say we immediately settled an overpriced bill and left .

Definitely a restaurant to seriously avoid.

Update: I had no idea the management had replied to my review on another site, contradicting and lying about what had passed between myself and the chef. The food was seriously awful and the chef/manager's attitude exactly as described and appalling. At no time did I say he "couldn't cook", however based on what we had maybe he needs to rethink his ability to cope with running a restaurant and cooking during Ramadan, which was the excuse he gave us. Based on the management's attempt to discredit my experience if zero stars were available as a rating, I'd certainly award them...

Paid £5 delivery fee to get delivered 5 mins up the road, but for convenience thought fine. Then waited an hour and a half for it to turn up cold... Did it sit there for 30 mins before delivery? I'm literally 5 mins away.

Forgot the pickled onions for the poppadoms, instead gave me 2 chutneys which had so much vinger in it, you got whiplash after 1 bite. I've also never seen mint sauce so watery before either.

Chips were an absolute soggy mess, and inedible.

Chicken tikka masala was bland and watery, chicken in it was so over cooked it was like bullets.

The meats in the tandoori mixed grill were so dry you needed a drink after every bite.

Even the breads were disgusting. 1 of which was a plain nan, but a store bought one is nicer...how do you mess up a plain nan? It just tasted weird and was severely undercooked.

£35 in the bin....

HAIR!!!

Ordered for collection, staff were nice but the venu was unwelcoming and rundown, which was kind of sad. Felt like being in someones living room. Ordered two curries, some chicken rice, cucumber yogurt, sag paneer and a naan. The curries were okay, but ridiculously sweet and it was kind of too much. The chicken rice was good, and so was the naan, but we found TWO black HAIRS in the naan. One you can ignore, two is just gross. The yogurt was really bad- it was grainy lumpy and also watery, reminiscent of, well- lets just say noone ate it.

Would definitely drive an extra 5 minutes to go literally anywhere else. The staff seemed lovely though! for some reason the order was like an extra fiver if paid by card, which is also weird.

All in all a mid and...