Spice Oven Restaurant

jhodgski

Not recommended... 6th December 2008

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Having informed the restaurant we were vegan when booking and, on arrival, felt re-assured when our dietary requirements were confirmed by the waiter seeing us to our table.

We ordered our meal from a dedicated vegan menu. There were lots of vegan options, and the ones we went for were delicous, and we were very pleased with our choice of restaurant. However...

...towards the end of the night, a waiter came over to us, expressing his sincere apologies that some of the dishes we were served were not vegan after all (as they contained butter), assuring us that we would only have to pay for our three drinks - a compromise which we accepted.

The drinks were only £13, but he returned later asking for £26, totally retracting his previous promise!

What ensued was a good 30 minutes of arguing between us and various members of staff, whilst we stuck to our principle that if you tell them you're vegan, they serve you non-vegan food, they apologise profusely then they say you don't have to pay for any of the food... then we expect not to have to pay for any of the food! Not, to end up having the same laborious argument with 3 members of staff.

We ended up feeling sorry for the guy who mistook our order: his mistake was unintentional but he had the decency to admit to us what had happened. But we were really disappointed by the management, who evidently lacked that decency, behaved quite aggressive towards us, and seemed only to care about their bottom line.

pgt38

Worth a Visit 25th November 2008

1 found this helpful

Quite a popular restaurant on the outskirts of Reading.

I was staying at a nearby hotel and decided to eat early as I would be dining alone.

Quite an extensive menu and with an interesting range of ‘specials’. Playing safe I opted for lamb tikka, followed by chicken tikka Dansak, pilau rice and a plain nan.

The starter was very impressive, with very tender well marinated lamb. The main course was very generous, piping hot and delicious and the nan.

The décor is all in good order and clean, with interesting enough a small bridge and pond in the centre. My only issue is the lighting is so low it I could hardly read the paper by the single candle – in fact I think I posed so much of a fire risk that the lights were (slightly) brighter when I returned a couple of weeks later.

I would definitely recommend to anyone in the area. It has also achieved a five star rating from ‘Scores on the Doors’ for cleanliness etc.