London Tourist Trap Tips by Helga67

Be aware of high restaurant bills Restaurants Review

During our visit in December 2001, we had a bad experience with having dinner in a good Indian restaurant in Chelsea. I'm sure that the restaurant took advantage of the fact that we were tourists and were not aware of the local customs. I want to tell you our story, so you will not experience the same thing.

We were a party of 8 and wanted to try the indian food. As we did not know this kind of food and had no idea what to take, the waiter suggested us to take a Indian banquet meal. This was really a good idea. We told him, however, not to bring us the most spicy platters. The food was very good and we were pleased until we received the bill; more than £ 400 for 8 people! We discussed the bill with the boss but it had no sense.
What we did wrong:
this Indian banquet meal was not on the menu, so there was no fixed price. We are used in Belgium that if you ask for a banquet meal, you pay a reasonable price because you get smaller portions of the usually main courses, but it seems that what they did in this restaurant, they charged us the full price for everything they brought and this were more than 8 main courses. They brought f.e. 3 plates with bread. Everyone took some bread from 1 plate or another, but none of the plates was empty. They charged 3 times bread. If we had know it (but of course we are stupid tourists!) we had emptied one plate before starting another and give back the full platters saying we did not use them. We did get spicy platters, of course not knowing this, we tried all platters. What we did wrong was not complaining about the spicy one's and giving them back. Of course they charged us the full price for those spicy platters we didn't want in the first place.

So if you want a mixture of Indian food and it is not on the menu be sure you ask in advance what they will charge you and if there is something you don't like or didn't ask for, surely complain about it and give it back before getting the bill!!!