Cardamom Restaurant — Restaurant in Ann Arbor

I stopped in to get a gift card for $40. The employee seemed very confused at how to get a gift card activated. After 10 minutes of waiting the employee went and got a second employee. This employee now worked on activating a gift card and took my credit card to pay for it. After another 15 minutes of waiting (verified by receipt showing gift card was swiped at 5:54 and I didn't leave till after 6:15) The employee had said they finally figure things out, handed me my receipts and had me go on my way.

When I got home I noticed I could check my gift card balance inline, and decided to verify the gift card had a proper balance, as I knew there were many problems between these two employees "attempting" to activate a gift card for me.

This is important as it is a gift to a college student who would not have necessarily had $40 cash on hand to pay for the meal, and if they showed up and the gift card didn't work they would be in trouble after eating to discover the gift card they received had NO balance on it.

As I anticipated (after the mess of dealing with two undertrained employees) a gift card had a zero dollar balance. After calling they told me they would call back and a manager called me about 10 minutes later. The manager informed me that the Second employee did not charge my credit card because the line that they used to do gift cards shares one with the phone and the phone was busy taking orders. Therefore they never activated the gift card because they didn't charge my credit card and they sent me on the way.

How horrible is this I would have felt like a fool giving a $40 gift to someone only to have them later tell me that there was no money on the card. Cardamom did not apologize to me for the thought of this being a "gift" to someone. The manager simply said I'm sorry that there wasn't money on you card card and I can take your credit card number over the phone and activate the gift card (greedy for money).

Needless to say I did not buy the gift card. Why, after over a half hour in-store, followed by having to make a phone call from my home would I trust that the employees who could not even activate a gift card are trained well enough to operate a kitchen in a sanitary fashion and treat someone to a meal with good customer service (clearly I didn't get any customer service for trying to buy a gift card)?

Very...

We live in Jackson, and my wife makes fairly regular trips to Detroit on the weekend. On the way back, she often picks up food from Cardamom, during covid. Because of Cardamom's online ordering system, I have to wait for just the right time to put in our order so that when my wife gets to the restaurant, the food is ready.

Usually, the online system will tell you when your food is expected to be ready, but not today. This time, no time estimate appeared, although when I clicked the address of the restaurant from my order cart, it said to allow about 30 minutes for the food to be prepared. I waited until 6:30 so that the food would be ready at about 7, when my wife usually arrives from Detroit. However, after I had placed the order, the website said that our food wouldn't be ready until 7:50!

There was no way to cancel the order online. I tried twice to call the restaurant to cancel the order, but the restaurant's voice mail system just picked up and you couldn't even leave a message. So I told my wife to have them cancel the order once she gets there, so that she isn't waiting around for almost an hour. However, when she arrived at 7, they told her the food was almost ready, just waiting for our order of garlic naan, so she didn't have them cancel the order.

Fast-forward an hour later. My wife has been waiting long enough that she has seen a walk-up customer put in an order and leave with their food before we even got ours! It wasn't until about five after 8 when they finally gave my wife our food. No explanation was given for the delay, nor any offer of discount. Clearly, the restaurant knew at 7 o'clock that our food was not "almost ready" but they happily lied to us so they could take our money. I left a 20% tip on the order, too, which of course was irrevocable because I paid online. It will be a long time, if ever, before we...

Cardamom used to be my favorite restaurant by far, I have eaten there many times and it's a place I hold dear to my heart because my husband and I had our first date there but I would now say "don't bother". We ordered two drinks, an appetizer and three dishes to share (and raita and naan) It was only half way through our main courses that our drinks came (after following up and waiting another 10 minutes). I don't know why it would take over 25 minutes for a beer and a simple cocktail to arrive. It would have been nice for the cost of those drinks to be waived as a courtesy but they were not. Our nonchalant waiter took forever to clear our table and give us boxes but was very quick to give us the check. I must say that the tables are ridiculously small so our bread basket ended up on the floor. As for the food it was alright, it used to be better, sometimes "medium spice" is subjective - it can mean comfortable heat and sometimes it will mean mouth on fire. The last two times they were very stingy on the meat, this time was ok. Ultimately their prices are quite high (most dishes tend to be around $17-$19) so there's an expectation of a certain level of quality. Their service has become quite poor - the last time I was there the two of us ordered the same dish - this was too confusing for our waitress because she thought that meant we were sharing the same tiny dish (when we had ordered nothing else). Instead of asking us to clarify she brought us the one dish and then we had to wait until they made the other one. Do you think we got a discount? Nope. This waiter was not much better. Maybe they need...