The Spice Oven - Reading

Do not eat here, terrible service and terrible food. We only ate cold fries and still had to pay 17.99 per person

This restaurant serves good verity of starters with full of taste. This is better then other dinner buffets in reading. Must visit if you are looking for a good dinner treat. Starters: Very good Main Course: Good Deserts: Good Veriety: Good

Took my family (3 kids and 2 adults) we booked a table for 5.30pm. And FOR the record 5.30pm is when they open. Don’t get me wrong I didn’t expect the world, but what I did expect was hot, freshly cooked food. This wasn’t the case! The crispy duck was in fact chewy, old and cold. Half the stations where half empty. The pan cake rolls for the duck where crispy and when you folded them you make the pancake roll they broke in half! The satay sauce for the chicken satay was freezing cold! A freezing cold sauce for HOT chicken (well meant to be hot chicken) burgers and sausages where put out onto the hot stations and no utensils where supplied. So people where using their fingers to pick up the food. The custard for the deserts was lumpy and curdled. The ‘chocolate mousse’ was sour and curdled. The lemon cheese cake was still frozen. Over all the food was shocking. The Customer service…. Even worse!!!! I was asked if I wanted a refil for my drink 4 times but never once asked how the food was. We asked for some tomato sauce and twice the waitress walked off and didn’t even seem to know what we were taking about. When it came to paying. The waitress brought over the cheque. I said to her before I even look at the bill can I just say your food here is shocking… she looked and me smiled and said thank you, I repeated what I said and again she smiled and said thank you. I said to her that’s not something to be happy about. I started to explain the above to her when an older gentleman (I assume the manager or owner) pushed her away and Said he would deal with it. I started to explain to him what was wrong and he told me he didn’t want to hear it. Kept talking over me and saying the sauce is meant to be cold and not willing to even listen to what I had to say. So I said if you won’t listen to me I won’t be paying. He soon changed his tune and asked me to tell him what was wrong. I explained the above. He had an answer for everything and basically told me all the food was cooked fresh and I was wrong. Never once did I get a sorry or any kind of acknowledgment that what I was saying may be correct or even to humour me. He was right and I was wrong and that’s all there was to it. He said that he would wave the food and I’ll just pay for the drinks. As I had no problem with the drinks I payed. BUT what really topped off my experience here was the fact that I after I paid for the drinks. He came back and said well there you go, you got a free meal. Do you do this everywhere you go? He also argued with us that we were regular customers to the restaurant. Which in fact was again not true as I had been there once prior and it was at least 10 years ago! I wasn’t out for a free meal and to be embarrassed infront of a whole restaurant. I merely wanted a nice family meal and ti explain my disappointment to the staff. As we gathered our bags the waitress then continued to snatch away tye cutlery in a stroppy teenager style manor! Funny thing was the commotion had got the attention of the other diners, who actually agreed with me about the service and the food. And the other diners continued to tell the gentleman I was in fact right. I only hope they didn’t pay for the awful experience as well!! Stay well clear unless you want to eat stale food that had been there for the day, not listened too by the staff, talked over and embarrassed with accusations that you are only out for a free meal and must do it every where you go!!!

Just had a takeaway from Spice Oven, and I have to congratulate them on producing the most repulsive curries I and my family have ever tasted. There was an overpowering taste of vinegar in every dish (meat cooked in vinegar can mean only one thing... , which obviously ruined any flavour there might have been whoever heard of butter chicken tasting of vinegar? Most of it was wasted. We paid 80 quid for this swill. There is no way we'd ever order from there again.

Everything tasted of vinegar, even the bbq ribs were too acidic to eat, and the korma was watery and flavourless, and the butter chicken was too spicy, acidic and way too oily. The Chinese chow mein was so spicy (chow mein should have at least some flavour) and the portions of chicken were practically non existent in the curries. We used to love the food here but it's completely inedible now. We will not be buying from here, it was over £80 and most of it was left because everyone hated the lack of decent flavour and the overwhelming vinegar flavour in every dish. People in the house are now suffering from indigestion from the high acid flavour so this is definitely a place to avoid in future.