The Bombay Bicycle Club, Surbiton

Well, I have been known to complain about a few things over the years, but I have never had a real bad word to say about an indian takeaway...

until I tried Bombay Bicycle Club.

So, I first used them about 7 months ago as a change from my local indian and I had

• high hopes

, afterall "Gordon Ramsey swears by it". Saying that, it doesn't take much to make Gordon Ramsey swear and I presume he was like me and swearing about the missing dishes on his order (replaced after a complaint call, but not until another 45 minutes later). I thought the customer service was pretty good as they replaced the entire order for me, although they still managed to not add the cardamom and fennel yoghurt that should have come with my starter (annoying when they charge £9.95 for a starter and that would've probably made the starter a lot more tasty). Anyway, long story short: £10 more than my usual curry, lukewarm at best food and over 2 hours from order to belly.

7 months later, after texts or emails everyday, I decided to use the discount I had earned from my first purchase and get what would become a cheap curry night.

£6 curry, rice and poppadum deal sounded good, added on a few extras (over £15) to get a free bottle of beer to go with dinner. With discount the total came to less than a tenner.

food arrived on time :)

I think they had made a mistake though.

warm beer and cold food. Bland food that has minimal spice and is watery. And they can't even get the minty yoghurt right!

Anyway, no more custom from me.

The Bombay Bicycle Club now has 2-3 actual restaurants around London and numerous 'delivery kitchens' as I think they call them, of which Surbiton is one. After receiving a flyer through the door advertising their food and menu, we were struck by the vibrancy of the branding and the fact it seemed like a more serious kind of restaurant take away delivery service than you would get from the other local Indian restaurants. The quoted reviews on the flyer sold it to us as they were of course excellent and so we decided to give it a go. The order process was simple as you would expect and the delivery came within the specified time. When we opened the bag the immediate thought was that we hadn't received everything we ordered but we were wrong - it's just the portions are not as big as maybe you would have been used to from your usual Indian take away. On the whole the food was reasonably tasty but considering the Bombay Bicycle Club is more expensive and you get less for your money, I'm not sure we'd order from them again, especially as we have a more reasonably priced alternative where the food is just as good.