Mango Grove – Basingstoke
OK, so, I love Indian food, when its done well. That’s unfortunately hard to find, but seek it we must. I love spice, and Maria does too, in particular I love “hot” spice more than most (Maria less so).
So naturally, having just moved to Basingstoke we wanted to find a decent Indian restaurant. Now we’ve made some friends recently – Bev, Kanchen and Vaj who live just up the road, so we were treated to some proper biryani chicken which kind of spoiled us. We had a delicious (And spicy!) meal round there a few weeks back which was wonderful. So with high hopes and standards to match, we ventured into the Mango Grove.
What a disappointment.
The restaurant is on the first floor off the old high street, which is in fact, nothing but an old office complex. This fact becomes painfully clear when you go to use the bathrooms, and you are greeted with something reminiscent of the Office series of which we are all so fond.
Now looking at the pic it looks nice, marble floors, and pretty walls etc, and to be fair, the restaurant part is well decorated, and I could have overlooked the toilets if everything else was up to scratch.
We sat down, and looked at the menus, and ordered drinks + poppadums. 10 minutes later I had to ask where the drinks were. Then they turned up fairly swiftly. This was to become a common theme for the evening.
Poppadums turned up, with some “original” chutney selection which was frankly crap. No lime chutney, and what there was wasn’t all that nice; I was still wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt but the poppadums were very stale, and we were disappointed.
Poppadums - better anywhere else.
A little later we ordered (!) the dishes. I forget what we ordered, such was the nature of the meal. We began our wait……
We soldiered on, drinking and chatting, and hoped that things would improve.
20 minutes later nothing had turned up. I needed another drink, but had noticed my glass had something unidentifiable in it. I ordered another drink, and was forced to order another glass as well (as I like Cobra bottled beer).
A further 20 minutes later I had to ask where the hell the food was. As if by magic it arrived, after a 40 minute wait. It was ok, to be fair, but I’d nearly finished my second beer which is pretty much unheard of in Jon-Land, in an Indian restaurant. We ate, it was ok. Nothign to write home about, and nothing tastes nice once you’re pissed off.
Wishing to pay, we had finished our meals, and once again we sat there praying for service. There weren’t even half the number of employees they should have had working, they were struggling so much. We waited another ten minutes to pay and cleared out of there. For once in my life, I refused to leave a tip. It was very expensive – £40 or so for the two of us, and the experience was only marginally more enjoyable than a rare tropical infection.
I’m a generous guy, and Maria is too. We enjoy rewarding good service and make a point of it as we’ve both worked low paid jobs for minimum wages before – we know the score – tips keep you going basically.
We both agreed – we weren’t paying the damn tip!
We waltzed out of there annoyed, and sworn never to return. Sorry guys, but The Mango Grove just isn’t any good. Watch this space – if we find a decent indian in Basingstoke, you’ll be sure to hear about it!
