Pride of India, Glenelg

- Alex Leave a comment

date of visit:  Sat 28 Aug 2010

With our dinner at the Yakumi well and truly stymied, our group of six was left to wander the streets of Glenelg looking for food.  At around 8pm on a Saturday night.  The Glenelg BBQ Inn, which would have been our natural fall back, was packed. Everyone was grumpy (some more than others) and people were getting thirsty.

As curry usually keeps everyone happy we headed down the road to the Pride of India to try our luck. We were lucky, in that they could accommodate six – taking the restaurant to approximately half full. Frankly, that’s about where the luck ran out …

It soon became apparent there was something wrong … I’m going to be kind and suggest that the restaurant had been left in the lurch by staff calling in sick. There appeared to be two ‘proper’ waiters – a man and a woman who were both wearing a uniform, and one of whom clearly knew what was going on. There seemed to be two other ‘waiters’ who had been drafted in. I suspect they may have been delivery drivers, given their very casual dress, and, in the case of one, absolute cluelessness about front of house restaurant service.

I do genuinely feel sorry for those dropped in a professional situation for which they are ill-equipped. However, I also feel sorry for me, when I’m at a restaurant and my waiter REALLY is Manuel of Fawlty Towers fame. So, drinks were ordered by pointing to pictures of beers on the menu. Our bottle of sparkling wine arrived and was placed on the table unopened. In some circumstances we’d have been worried about the grubby fingerprints all over our glasses, but we had to get that bottle open first …

As you might expect, the food ordering process was pretty shambolic. Our group tried to keep it as simple as possible but moments later the waitress (who knew what was going on) had to return to our table to clarify our meal: clearly the delivery driver cum waiter hadn’t been briefed on how to take an order.

So – service-wise, I’m sure you get the picture. Things did improve slightly as the meal progressed but there are obviously some very serious staffing issues at the Pride of India.

All of our food did arrive, and as ordered. The main courses were far superior to the entrées, which we mostly found to be a little unexciting. My mixed pakora was OK, but a touch salty and certainly nothing to rave about. Salty seemed to be a common complaint around the table.

Main courses were much better. I chose the dal gosht – lamb and lentils, along with a bhatura (deep fried bread … how can you go wrong? While I definitely enjoyed my main more than my entrée, I’m not such a fan of the use of kidney beans in dal and a hungry eater might complain that the portion was a little light on meat. For me, it was pretty much the perfect size.

Other main courses ordered included the tandoori lamb chops, the hot Malayalee prawns and the lamb nawabi. Everyone was in agreement that their main courses were superior to the starters … but no one was convinced that the experience was worth the effort. As I’ve mentioned of the Taj Tandoor, curry in a restaurant just can’t be ho-hum. While I can’t vouch for the authenticity of any curries made in our household, I do know that they’ll be tasty, the meat will be tender and the meal will be cheap. If I’m paying $20 for a main course, I need to feel that somewhere along the way, something is being value added. And I’m not talking about comedy service.

The evening wrapped up, costing just under $50 a head. Unsurprisingly, we were in the restaurant quite a while, so I wouldn’t recommend Pride of India for a quick meal. In fact, I’d only recommend it for potential comedy value …

Pride of India

Comedy service, average curry

The food just wasn’t good enough to make up for the amateur service …

Rating:2.0 stars
**

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Yakumi, Glenelg

- Alex 2 Comments

date of visit:  Sat 28 August 2010

Yakumi, a tiny Japanese restaurant on Jetty Road, Glenelg has been something of a favourite venue amongst my extended family for quite some time.  So much so that my uncle and aunt actually booked out the whole restaurant for my cousin’s 21st birthday.

So you might be thinking that you’re about to read about the family’s latest, greatest experience, eating fabulous Japanese food and enjoying an all round top night out.

You could not be further from the truth.

There aren’t many seats at the Yakumi as it’s popular and, as we were planning a Saturday evening sortie, my father rang the Tuesdsay beforehand to book a table for 6 people for 7:30pm.  The phone was answered, the booking was taken (including name and contact number) and the family promptly put the date in its collective diary.

And when we arrived at the restaurant on Saturday night we found my uncle and aunt on the footpath … apparently not a record of our booking in sight.  With a full restaurant there was nothing that could be done except leave and find somewhere else to eat – always a handy thing to do as it pushes 8pm on a Saturday night.

So there’s no raving about the food here, just a comment on how truly awful service is at the Yakumi.  Taking a booking isn’t rocket science … 6 people, 7:30pm, Saturday … I’m pretty sure even I could manage it.  And if I ran a restaurant, I’d want to keep both potential customers happy and I’d be making sure that repeat customers keep on coming back – and that starts by not messing up bookings.

I’m prepared to accept that mistakes happen and bookings do get lost … but this isn’t actually the first time my family has had this experience so we can only conclude that while whatever happens in the kitchen at the Yakumi might be good, front of house leaves a lot to be desired.

Perhaps you won’t mind the embarrassment and hassle that a misplaced booking causes but for us, it’s more than a good enough excuse to check out some of Adelaide’s other Japanese restaurants.

Yakumi

Terrible Service

If your front line staff can’t take a booking, customers will never have the opportunity to try your food. The eating out experience starts when the phone is first answered …

Rating:0.5 stars
1/2

Yakumi on Urbanspoon

Taj Tandoor, Adelaide

- Alex Leave a comment

date of visit:  Friday 20 August 2010

Our previous trip to the Taj Tandoor, on Rundle Street, was towards the end of last year, quite late on a busy Saturday night. On that occasion we enjoyed our food but were left underwhelmed by the service.

We headed for a return visit on Friday night – this time very early in the piece (around 6:30pm) and the restaurant was easily half empty. It filled up rapidly in the hour or so we were there, so if you want to eat slightly later on a Friday night then booking is recommended.

Actually, booking isn’t recommended (by me, at least) – because the sloppy service we experienced last year hasn’t improved and our experience on Friday night was (and I’m being kind here) laughable.

We arrived without a booking and, despite the large number of empty spaces, finding us a table turned in to a two man operation. This kind of redundancy was evident throughout our meal … if a job could be done by one person you could pretty much guarantee it would be done by two or more. There appeared to be a clear hierarchy which meant that staff wasted time deferring to at least one other person before making decisions.

This is particularly frustrating when you’re waiting for a drink and pappadums! We were actually given menus while waiting for a table but, when seated, had to wait a surprisingly long time for a drinks order to be taken. Naturally, we weren’t surprised when our drinks took a while to turn up …

The icing on the bad service cake was that, at the point we were about two thirds of the way through our entrées, literally, still with knives and forks in hand, we were approached by a waitress who asked if we were ready for our main courses. What? Mid mouthful am I really expected to answer that? What made her think that we would be ready?

It struck me as odd that, in a restaurant so eager to turn tables we would have to wait to pay our bill. But wait we did … as two people doubled up on register work, sorting bills, dockets, receipts … This meant that neither paid very much attention to us as the restaurant took our money. What an excellent way to make your customers feel valued.

You’ve probably realised that we won’t be rushing back, but clearly this is a popular Adelaide eatery, and if you can forgive bad service you might be interested in the food, which we feels falls in the ‘pretty good’ category.

I started with a very nice mango lassi, which I scoffed before almost any food arrived. I began my meal with the vegetable pakoras and Andy with the fish tikka. Both of these dishes suffered from being reheated – in the case of the fish, very much so, as it was really quite rubbery – the knife was keen on bouncing off the flesh than separating the flakes. The pakoras were in a lot better shape – a little tough but tasty nonetheless.

For main course I had a plate of the dahl with a buttery, buttery naan and Andy had the lamb rogan josh with pulao rice. The dahl had a good heat to it and was rich and creamy (and was perfectly mopped up by the naan) and Andy really enjoyed his lamb – it was tender and the sauce was rich, redolent with cloves and finished with a lovely sour tang.

But that’s not enough for me to put myself through the sloppy service mill again.T here are many good curry restaurants in Adelaide with service several notches above that at the Taj Tandoor. And, of course, there’s always the problem that an excellent curry can be produced at home – a restaurant really does need to offer something a bit extra whether it sits on Rundle Street or not.

I doubt we’ll be giving the Taj Tandoor the opportunity for third time lucky for a while …

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