Four friends and I dined at Tamarai, Covent Garden last night. It was a far from good experience and I was thoroughly disappointed and here is why:
The restaurant gives a fairly good first impression (70% full (at 8pm), good atmosphere, fairly nice decor) but I'm afraid that's where it ends.
The waiting staff and manager are clueless and far from professional: within our first 10mins, the manager spilt a plate of food in someones lap and on the floor which I almost slipped on even after they had cleaned it up.
The service gets worse…The menu states that each diner must order a ‘large plate’ (main meal) but fails to state that only 4 out the 6 dishes on the menu are available (the two dishes they didn't have were the only meat dishes on the menu). I cheekily asked for a complimentary beef starter (in addition to our own starters) to make up for the lack of meat/chicken available on the main menu. To our surprise, this was not available either. All five starters arrived at different times (about 10mins apart from each other) and it was quite difficult to catch the eye of the staff passing by.
I requested a business card from the manager of Tamarai so I could air my disappoint in the bad service and was given a leaflet for Tamarai upon which he reluctantly wrote his name – no apologies were offered for the evening's events and this place definitely hasn't heard of ‘service with a smile’. I would be highly embarrassed if I were the owenr of this establishment and furthermore would not recommend Tamarai to anyone in fact I would do the opposite and warn them off before they even considered dining here.
On a good note, the bathroom was quite nice.