Our first meal in Dishoom and why there won't be a second
Heard great things about Dishoom
I had heard amazing things about Dishoom, so it had been on my list for a while. It ended up happening quite spontaneously. A few of us got together and had brunch there.
The venue
The restaurant was quite funky.
It was spacious, fairly busy and I felt like it had a bit of a formal vibe to it when we walked in. The staff were attentive and there was clearly visible hierarchy about the various tasks that the staff managed.
The meal
We all ordered the same dish. It was called The Vegan Bombay and here’s the description of it:
Bountiful vegan repast. Beyond Meat sausages, vegan black pudding, abundant tofu akuri, grilled field mushrooms, masala beans, grilled tomato and home-made vegan buns. (V) 13.90
We were excited and hungry and couldn’t wait to tuck into our meal. I only took photos of my plate because I didn’t see the point in taking photos of four identical places. The other reason was that everyone wanted to get started! :) If we’d taken photos of the other dishes, you’d see that although they were meant to be the same, they weren’t.
As we ate and asked each other what we thought of various parts of the dish, two people in our group said ‘What mushrooms?’ For some reason, both of them had everything but the mushrooms. We called a member of staff over and she said she would arrange for a double portion of mushrooms to be sent over to our table. We waited for some time but the mushrooms didn’t arrive, so we called someone else over. They weren’t aware of the complaint, so we had to explain it all again, adding that we were still waiting for the dish of mushrooms to arrive. That person didn’t seem to have the authority to deal with it, so they said they would check with someone, after which someone else to come to our table. They weren’t aware of what had happened so we had to explain it again. It wasn’t great!
None of this was ideal because there was a gap between it arriving and everyone starting their meal. This resulted in parts of the meal being hotter or colder than other bits and it also meant that, if they wanted to have the mushrooms with beans on the bun, for example, they couldn’t, because they were waiting for them to arrive.
Unfortunately, I didn’t like a couple of things, and couldn’t make myself eat them either. I didn’t feel satisfied.
The Vegan Bombay
Did they do anything to make up for the errors?
I would have expected them to make some sort of gesture of goodwill to kind of compensate for making an error like this. The dish had been on their menu for some time, it included specific items and all four plates were served at the same time, yet two of them had an item missing. However, from what I remember, there was no ‘making good.’
Would I go to Dishoom again?
No, I wouldn’t. Maybe the experience that customers usually have is amazing and maybe there were staffing issues on this day in particular. Who knows? Maybe that’s the point. Had someone said, “I’m really sorry. This isn’t normal for us. We’re having some teething problems at the moment. Please do come again and you’ll see a difference.” In circumstances like this, I’ve heard of managers offering a free meal when the customer returns or discounting the bill from that disappointing experience etc.
Anyway, all that aside, it felt like a lot of money for a meal that I didn’t enjoy, which was disturbed by us having to call the staff over several times ie to explain what was missing, to chase the fact that the mushrooms hadn’t arrived and then to explain it again.
“Cattle and sheep emit large amounts of methane while forests are destroyed to create pasture and grow the grains that are fed to intensively reared animals.”