A trip to Birmingham could only mean one dinner option - a good curry. If only we’d had one! To say Barajee was a disappointment would be an understatement.
We arrived for our 1800 reservation - the place was packed. We waited for ages for...our order to be taken, there was no offer of drinks while we were looking at the menu, our poppadoms took a further 15 minutes and they were almost finished by the time we got our drinks (after reminding the waiter that we’d not had them).
Prawn puri starters were just ok - not exactly a fluffy puri and with no presentation effort. Drinks finished, we asked for another. They didn’t come so we asked again. Nope, still no drinks. Only when I had 2 mouthfuls of my main course left did someone approach and ask whether we’d like to order more drinks.
Main courses - mine wasn’t what I ordered - chicken balti instead of chicken tikka balti. And it wasn’t a proper balti either, just a very bland curry in a balti-shaped dish. Naans were barely warm, barely cooked, floppy, soggy and sad looking. The only tasty thing was the tarka dhal. When my main was almost finished, the guy who finally offered drinks asked whether all was ok. I pointed out that I’d not got the correct dish and he did offer to change it, but too late, we had concert tickets and had already spent too long there due to the painfully slow ‘service’ so requested the bill. Twice. Eventually we went to the bar to try to get the bill.
Cheekily they charged for the tikka that I didn’t have in my ‘balti’ and scowled when I asked for it to be changed to plain chicken. I also mentioned that we’d not received drinks despite ordering twice. A shrug and ‘we’re busy’ was the response.
Honestly, this place is pretty awful - the staff don’t seem to give a stuff about customer service, the food is poor and the thumping noise from the bar downstairs makes for a less than pleasant experience.More