Vintage India (Durban)

Monday, February 1st, 2016

Reviewed by Anusha Singh

We ate at Vintage India on Saturday, 30/01/16 - 2 adults and 2 kids. The venue is spacious and neat. We ate inside as we wanted to get out of the muggy heat - the aircon was a welcome relief. We ordered a starter 'half a platter', non-veg which according to our waitress was 'very big'. At R150, I was expecting a fair amount as the menu said it would contain "fish, chicken, mince". What we got was a plate, one-third salad (mostly shredded lettuce, 3 thick slices of cucumber and 2 slices of tomato) and the rest comprised two small drummettes, two small pieces of fish tikka, two mediium pieces of chicken tikka, two medium pieces of chicken in some green spice and one small piece of seekh kebab. The drummettes, fish tikka and chicken tikka were delicious. The rest was mediocre. For R150, this was a total rip-off. There are platters at other indian restaurants that literally have twice the amount of food at less than this price, and everything is tasty! For mains we ordered lamb rogan josh, prawn tikka masala and half tandoori chicken. The tandoori chicken was served about ten minutes before the other dishes arrived, and when we asked for one of the naan that we ordered to be brought to the table so that my son could start eating the chicken, it did not happen. The naan only arrived with the other two main courses a while later. The lamb rogan josh had nice soft pieces of meat, but the curry sauce was disappointing - lacked flavour and colour. The prawn tikka masala had six prawns, also in a curry sauce that lacked colour and flavour - think it was R 105 - for six prawns, that were rubbery nogal - looked like they had been boiled! All in all a very disappointing dinner - aside from the bad food, the service was poor. Our waitress had absolutely no knowledge about the items on the menu, and didn't even understand what we were ordering. The order had to be repeated several times, and she still came back again to ask again what we had ordered. If she didn't do that, we would have ended up with a vegetable platter! Dinner cost us over R 500 - we could have eaten much better tasting food for slightly less at Indian Connection or even less at Oriental. I will not be returning to this restaurant. Food is overpriced, service is bad and the taste of the food is mediocre at best.