The Spice Mill

I went out last night to a local Indian restaurant called The Spice Mill.

In advance of visiting I'd tried calling to discuss my dietary needs with someone, but had real problems getting the man answering the phone to understand me, so decided to try with the waiter on the night instead.

Let's deal with the good news first - the food was fantastic. The portions weren't as huge as many Indian restaurants do them for some reason, and they were fresh and beautifully seasoned.

Unfortunately the staff let it down. We had one waiter who had really good english, and was polite and helpful ... when he was available.

We asked for a jug of water at the start of the evening, and after the third time of asking, got some glasses of water during our main meal. We had to wait a fair bit between ordering, and courses, and had to try hard to get the attention of a waiter. On two occasions, getting that attention supplied us with some incomprehensible grunts - and no resolution to our requests.

When our main courses arrived, the waiter for some reason started picking through my friend's dish with a spoon, between handing each of the other dishes and rice to the table. We asked several times what the problem was, and were rewarded with more incomprehensible grunts before he ran away, taking the dish with him! Another waiter was next to our table as he ran, and my friend took advantage of him looking at us to say she didn't know why he took the dish (it seemed to be the correct dish). This waiter grunted something else, and then met the decent waiter on the way up the stairs. He turned to our table and we told him the waiter had taken a dish away with no explanation. He went to find out what happened. After a few minutes, a dish (looking like the same dish) was brought to my friend. He made a half-assed attempt of an apology and left - we are still completely in the dark as to what happened, and it didn't fill us with much comfort for the rest of the evening. Nobody came to see how we were doing and if everything was ok, and we were left for a fair amount of time again after our meals before we were asked if we wanted coffees or desserts. We were too disgusted to stay much longer by that point.

So, we had an enjoyable evening - because the company was good and we had plenty of time to waste (luckily enough). The meal was not overly expensive, and we were unimpressed with the presentation of a rose each as we left. We'd have preferred better service.

Our final verdict was that we'd eat the food again, but only from the takeaway service.