E1 1DE - Bombay Grill Whitechapel - Bad experience
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E1 1DE - Bombay Grill Whitechapel - Bad experience
The other day I thought of celebrating the joy of getting my ILR and decided to treat my wife and friends in an Indian/Pakistani restaurant called Tayyabs, located in Whitechapel. My colleagues at work often go there which suggested me that it might be a good place to dine. I never got the opportunity to join my colleagues due to my shift patterned work. So, I decided to take my friends to Tayyabs on a weekend. However, when we arrived there, it was house full unfortunately and moreover there was a huge queue waiting to get a table. So we decided to go to some less crowded restaurant. On our way to Tayyabs, we spotted some less busy restaurants on Whitechappel road. I saw this decent sized restaurant near some traffic lights on Whitechapel road. It was called Bombay Grill.
It was quite empty, which suggested us that probably people didn't like the food there. However, since we were running out of time and since the restaurant looked quite alright, we decided to dine there. I thought the waiter seemed not to be trained well. We were 6 and hence approached a table with 8 chairs. We thought since the restaurant was almost empty, it shouldn't bother the waiter who was serving us. But he stopped us and asked us to wait. He did some rearrangement of chairs and put 6 chairs the same space where there were 8 chairs previously. We didn't see the point in doing that as the 6 chairs were occupying the same space that the 8 chairs were occupying and moreover, the restaurant was almost empty !
The 2nd thing annoying thing occurred when my friend asked if the kheema was of chicken or lamb. He smiled and said restaurants don't do chicken kheema and if they did, they could be in trouble ! I didn't understand when he said, "they could be in trouble". Well why ?
Thirdly, when I asked if the picture of the daal in the menu was daal makhni or not, he asked me "are you Indian or not ? Which part of India are you from ?" (He meant, if I was Indian I ought to know). I said, "I am from Pune and when compared to north India, daal makhni is not prepared much in other parts of India. By the way, I was just confirming about the daal, as there are many kinds of Daal in India and I wanted to make sure that the one shown in the menu was daal makhni as my friend was interested to have daal makhni. He had something or the other to say when we enquired about something. We were getting uncomfortable and hesitant to ask any questions to him.
The worst thing happened when I thought a small stone particle came into my mouth from a piece of chicken tikka. When I removed it from my mouth, I was quite surprised to know that it was actually a small screw !!
I politely showed it to the waiter. He seemed to be scared and took it to the kitchen without saying anything. I could see him telling about it to the chefs, as it was an open kitchen. After a bit of discussion with the chefs, he came to me and said, "I would have agreed if you would have said that you found it in the lamb grill". I was a bit annoyed and asked him if he didn't agree to what I said. To that he said, "no no, I didn't mean that". He went back to the kitchen and repeated the same thing loudly to his kitchen mate saying," I would have agreed if he said he had found it in the lamb grill". It sounded as if he was saying it loudly, purposely, so that we could hear it. At this point my wife got really angry and said to him, "Look, we are trying to be nice with you and you are taking advantage of it". Well, it doesn't matter in which meat I found it. Moreover he never apologised ! All he ought to have said was "sorry" !
The vegetarian food and the lamb kheema was alright. My friends thought that the non veg food starters were bland and lacked taste. The ambience was average. There was one interesting thing in the restaurant. It was a long painting painted across the top of a wall which showed Mumbai and various old and new bollywood actors in the form of their cartoons. I paid the bill on the counter / till. While paying the bill, I asked the waiter in a friendly manner, where was he from and he said Goa. He said his ancestors were from Portugal and hence he had some kind of visa which gave him permission to work in many parts of Europe. I guess it must be a work permit which the citizens of the European Union have which allows them to work in the countries which belong to the European Union.
Well, so the point is that, I did not have a good time in "Bombay Grill" in Whitechapel and this restaurant needs some improvement in many aspects and I wouldn't go there again unless the management does something to improve the conditions there.