I wanted to give this place five stars, indeed, as we sat there enjoying our meals, I thought to myself, I am going to go home and write a five-star review about them on Qype.
Unfortunately, both cuppacaku and prissila's experiences had something in common with ours, which was that while the food left no room for complaints, the service was a bit off. Indeed, I was surprised to learn it had been open as long as it had; although I walk that was a couple times a week I didn't realize it'd been open more than a couple of months. Aber anyway.
In the beginning you get one pappadum per person (!!) with three sauces. Not sure what the point of this is or why they are so geizig with the pappadum. Perhaps if you ask, they will bring you more for free. I dunno. We got exactly two, the lady dining solo at the next table got exactly one. Maybe this is how they avoid having to reuse their pappadum (as I have seen done at Amrit).
Drink order came wrong, but who knows, maybe I mumbled when I ordered it. Waitress looked appropriately repentant, I kept the mistake drink. No biggie.
Despite the very reasonably priced lunch offers I decided to go with the Chicken Vindaloo, mostly because I didn't want to settle for something else just to save like three bucks. Well, maybe six bucks, if you include the soup I bought to accompany my meal. Which was a bad idea, not because the soup was bad (it was great, the Murgi Cremesuppe, I recommend it) but because I was way too full less than halfway through the meal. The soup isn't served with bread or anything (something I love about Amrit) but it's a solid soup, mine had plenty of chicken in it, unlike some places that serve meatless meat soup. Husband's lentil soup was very good too, better than mine, which I found on the creamy side (crazy the things you get when you order stuff with cream in the name, eh?).
Husband got a vegetarian option off the lunch special menu, I thought it was meh, but he (German, in case anyone cares) thought it was amazing. He particularly liked the diversity and amount of vegetables, indeed, it did look very colorful and appetizing, if not a bit light/lightly seasoned for my taste. (I like my Indian food like I like a winter jacketthick, heavy, and makes you sweat after a couple of minutes.)
My vindaloo was positively LOVELY. A bit different than vindaloo I have had elsewhere, but far from lacking in flavor, richness and good spicy hotness. (My Scolville threshold is a bit reduced after having grudgingly become accustomed to seasoning catered to the German palate, so it toed the line of being TOO hot, but that's only an indication that I need to eat more spicy food. They did good, I appreciated the challenge.) The rice was also heavenly. Usually I think of rice as pointless, flavorless carbs (and therefore to be avoided) but their basmati was like an adventure. Should have paid better attention to the seeds in it, maybe caraway? All the grains lovely and separated and shimmering and chewy and gorgeous. Maybe one day I'll go there and just have a bowl of that.
So the service was less than what you'd expect from a profi, but the food was good and plentiful and we were very happy campers indeed. Their five star rating was in the bag. Until.
Until they managed to push the ONE button I have. I don't ask much, but I do have one big, big pet peeve.
Do not. Take fifteen minutes. To make me pay.
As pressilla notedyou wait, and you wait, and you wait. However, at this time, we had the advantage of sitting outside and having a very good vantage point of who was doing what and where. Unverschämt is the word. We told the server we wanted to pay, he stopped and had a friendly chat with the next table, then ambled off casually. He continued to do this for what felt like forever. Our table had been cleared and there we sat, getting gray hair after gray hair, wrinkle after wrinkle, I developed osteoperosis, my husband lost a tooth, in short, we waited about 60 years for him to finish faffing about and bring us the motherloving check. If you think you're too busy to bring us the check right now, then do everything else a liiiiiiittle bit faster. But there was zero hustle in his game. He had all day, why shouldn't we?
Anyhow. Now armed with the proper forewarning, I am fully prepared to go back again, on another day when I don't mind the wait so much, and am not cranky, and sleepy, and way too full from the fantastic soup. I feel optimistic about their chances to convince me of their five-star status next time will be sure to write an update. read more
