Review: Is Minerva Indian Cuisine, Natick just bad or the worst?
Minerva Indian Cuisine located in Sherwood Plaza in Natick on Route 9 (Boston suburbs, Metrowest) is one of the worst restaurants ever and it is so bad that it deserves a blog post of it's own.
Agreed that mostly in Indian and Chinese places, you really don't expect good service. But there is so much between good and bad that it is really difficult to be consistently bad. And Minerva manages to do that. The other point is, unlike snack places like Hot Breads or Dosa temple, they are not cheap and pretty upscale. To their defense however, the food is probably the best if you like South Indian main course meals (non idli vada sambhaar kinds).
So I had on principle, stopped going to Minerva. Last time when I went, they made us sit in a corner table which is meant for waiting people in-spite of being no wait. On asking, they said this is what you get. Then I heard some other horror stories most horrific of them being 2 people went there, but only one ordered food and other one just had some from the other person. The waiter comes and says, Sir, we will charge you 18% gratuity as you are not eating. Now, how stupid is that, because people anyway give an 18% tip. They just lost two customers again.
Ok, so even after all this, I decide to go there with three more friends as they really like the food there. We go, they at least seat us in decent places. So far so good. The glass tubler looks heavily used. Even at peak time, the crowd is very less. The menu card is also torn in places. In addition, there is a board that weekend buffet is only 10.49$ instead of some $15ish earlier. All this makes me secretly happy that the place has really taken a backseat and people are smart enough to hate a place based on service inspite of the food being good.
The waiter's non bad behavior of giving us a decent seat was already improvement for me. Alas, not for long. So one of my friends orders Rava Masala Dosa. The waiter says, sir fine, however, just to let you know, it takes around 30-35 minutes for Rava masala. This is still ok, at least he let us know that it takes time though Rava masala should not take that long even if starting from scratch. But what he says next is the best:
"So please don't bug me every 10 minutes asking where is the food, where is the food"
Now, who uses a language like that? Agreed may be they didn't mean it that way, but they are service sector and atleast 5 years into business. They should know this much etiquette. Anyway, we keep making fun of the place and their waiters and their bad service but they don't seem to care even though the manager desk was pretty close. But this is not the end.
So finally, the Rava dosa guy had ordered paper masala, but he was given Mysore masala. We ddi not notice and he had started eating that. Like others, his food was good too and our conversation veered towards whatever it is, the food in Minerva is good.
But just then, the waiter comes with Paper masala in his hand and says sorry sir, we got you the wrong Dosa. And then they literally took the plate away from him forcefully even as he was breaking a morsel out of it. He was half breaking the dosa and the waiter snatched the plate away and put the paper plain dosa in there. What were they going to do with the Mysore masala? reuse it? They just took it away midway.
So, Minerva still lived up to it's reputation of being the worst Indian restaurant around.
My purpose of writing this article is to highlight the fact that they are bad. Somehow in Yelp, you have to be a regular reviewer to have your reviews stay, so no point writing there. Also, I have tried some search indexing here and there to pull this post up. Let us see how my keyword placements work.
Agreed that mostly in Indian and Chinese places, you really don't expect good service. But there is so much between good and bad that it is really difficult to be consistently bad. And Minerva manages to do that. The other point is, unlike snack places like Hot Breads or Dosa temple, they are not cheap and pretty upscale. To their defense however, the food is probably the best if you like South Indian main course meals (non idli vada sambhaar kinds).
So I had on principle, stopped going to Minerva. Last time when I went, they made us sit in a corner table which is meant for waiting people in-spite of being no wait. On asking, they said this is what you get. Then I heard some other horror stories most horrific of them being 2 people went there, but only one ordered food and other one just had some from the other person. The waiter comes and says, Sir, we will charge you 18% gratuity as you are not eating. Now, how stupid is that, because people anyway give an 18% tip. They just lost two customers again.
Ok, so even after all this, I decide to go there with three more friends as they really like the food there. We go, they at least seat us in decent places. So far so good. The glass tubler looks heavily used. Even at peak time, the crowd is very less. The menu card is also torn in places. In addition, there is a board that weekend buffet is only 10.49$ instead of some $15ish earlier. All this makes me secretly happy that the place has really taken a backseat and people are smart enough to hate a place based on service inspite of the food being good.
The waiter's non bad behavior of giving us a decent seat was already improvement for me. Alas, not for long. So one of my friends orders Rava Masala Dosa. The waiter says, sir fine, however, just to let you know, it takes around 30-35 minutes for Rava masala. This is still ok, at least he let us know that it takes time though Rava masala should not take that long even if starting from scratch. But what he says next is the best:
"So please don't bug me every 10 minutes asking where is the food, where is the food"
Now, who uses a language like that? Agreed may be they didn't mean it that way, but they are service sector and atleast 5 years into business. They should know this much etiquette. Anyway, we keep making fun of the place and their waiters and their bad service but they don't seem to care even though the manager desk was pretty close. But this is not the end.
So finally, the Rava dosa guy had ordered paper masala, but he was given Mysore masala. We ddi not notice and he had started eating that. Like others, his food was good too and our conversation veered towards whatever it is, the food in Minerva is good.
But just then, the waiter comes with Paper masala in his hand and says sorry sir, we got you the wrong Dosa. And then they literally took the plate away from him forcefully even as he was breaking a morsel out of it. He was half breaking the dosa and the waiter snatched the plate away and put the paper plain dosa in there. What were they going to do with the Mysore masala? reuse it? They just took it away midway.
So, Minerva still lived up to it's reputation of being the worst Indian restaurant around.
My purpose of writing this article is to highlight the fact that they are bad. Somehow in Yelp, you have to be a regular reviewer to have your reviews stay, so no point writing there. Also, I have tried some search indexing here and there to pull this post up. Let us see how my keyword placements work.
1 comment:
On finally, thanks for writing this post! I absolutely hate this place and never went after the first time. Good job!
Excerpt from my Yelp review on minerva:
I have heard wonderful reviews from others about the food taste at Minerva. I am not refuting that, though I believe the Chicken 65 was way too chilli and the dosa (apparently multi-layered, but could only see one layer of chutney) was a bit undercooked. The Palak Panneer and samosa were very good and the Naan was nice too. The sweet pongal was also well balanced and was not too sweet as other restaurants tend to render. But the niceties end right here.
But what made me write the review was the appalling quality of service. It was one of the worst given the string of bad mannerisms that made me feel at one point embarrassed. After a typical wait on a Saturday night, we were seated in a table that still had Windex sitting on it with no cutlery and partially cleaned table, we were graciously offered another table which was better. We then ordered food, two of us choosing the same dish. Only I made a small change in the dish and both of us ended up getting the changes - which was still OK. But when we called a waiter to point him to this, we didn't listen too long before telling us that he'll get the waiter who took the order to clarify - we were lying? We were then waiting for the original waiter who had gone out to smoke! The change was finally made after a good 15 min. The third of us had ordered Mango lassi which was also forgotten by the waiter. We had to keep calling the waiter to refill our water (remember, the Chicken 65 was super hot - I am South Indian by the way who is used to eating above average spicy food). The way they served water, the way they placed cutlery and food (the dosa's end was outside the plate and was being pulled across on the table!) and the constant chatter between the waiters made a really bad place to eat in. Someone had dropped some papad pieces on the floor - a sane person would just pick it up - the waiter resorted to using a portable vacuum cleaner to clean the place. While I was just getting out of the effect of vacuuming while I was eating, the adjacent table was being cleaned with Windex flying out to near by tables filled with food. Eeeks! . The thing that next happened topped all this. The waiters as I said enjoyed standing next to us and chattering away - they were discussing the movie that was playing in the TV and with utter lack of decency, with us hearing, one commented that the movie was the one where there were some 'scenes' to watch out for.
Having endured one of the worst mannerisms ever, I'd dare not go to this place again. A restaurant's rating doesn't reflect just the food, but the entire package - food, politeness, willingness to serve and friendliness. Minerva, in my opinion, fails utterly.
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