I am a Bengali and love Bengali food. I made a reservation for Esplanade on the 01st of Jan for lunch with my mother.
I am from the hospitality background myself and was aghast at the attitude of the manager. Extremely rude and unhelpful, he could not manage the crowd of patrons and behaved badly and got into several arguments with the customers.
Service at the table was slow and food was being just dumped. Had to raise my hands and even get up from the table, to get served. I specifically asked to bring the food, course by course and immediately after the appetizers were served, main course was dumped on the table. When asked, the response of the wait staff was that there was too much rush outside. So, basically, just to get a table for the next customer, they were ready to shove the food down the throat of the customers already dining. To add to the woes, I had asked to pack a lot of the food that two of us could not consume which was almost half portions of everything that we had ordered. I specifically asked if everything was packed and the waiter and manager confirmed not once but twice. When we returned home and sat for dinner, we found out that two of the high costing items were not packed. When I called up the restaurant, the manager said he will call back in few minutes. After fifteen minutes, when I did not receive a call back, I called him up again and he said that he cannot do anything as he does not have staff to send the food although he admitted that it was their mistake. He insisted that next time we visit the restaurant, he will make up for the goof up.
We are frequent visitors to restaurants across Bangalore and we have never had such a bad experience in any upmarket restaurants. For an upmarket restaurant, where a customer paid 4000 for a meal for two, this unprofessionalism is unacceptable.
Food is good though and portion size is good.