A restaurant owner has hit back after receiving complaints about his Christmas dinner from a disgruntled dad who described it as “a farce”.
Shah Munim, manager of Ruposhi Indian Bar & Restaurant, robustly defended his asian establishment from the scathing review by Rick Arpino, who visited the restaurant on Christmas Day with his partner and their four kids.
Rick claimed he requested two Indian dinners for the grown-ups and traditional Christmas dinners for the children.
However, images revealed that the four kids were served up chicken, chips and a half fried tomato.
Rick blasted the food his offspring were served up in a Facebook ‘rant’ and in a bad review on Tripadvisor.
“What an absolute farce of a restaurant - Xmas Dinner ruined for our children on the whim of this establishment,” the dad-of-four said.
However, the Ruposhi Indian Restaurant, based in Bury, Greater Manchester, has said that it rang up its customers in advance of Christmas Day to take their orders - and to explain that they were no longer serving a traditional Christmas dinner menu due to a lack of interest.
Since the complaint was published, hundreds of people have been leaving comments, reports Manchester Evening News.
“I think Christmas dinner was ruined the second you decided to go for an Indian for a Christmas dinner,” said Peter Holden, responding to the post on the What’s on in Ramsbottom Facebook page.
And John Southworth said: “Ruposhi is a fabulous Indian restaurant serving wonderful Indian food, we love it there. However, it would probably be low down on my list of places to host a ‘traditional’ British Christmas lunch. Maybe try another establishment rather than giving it a bad review?”
Rachel Bowen went to the Ruposhi on Christmas Day - and said she was told they weren’t doing Christmas dinner when she booked.
She said: “We went yesterday couldn’t fault it we all had the curry amazing. After all it is an Indian curry house. If you wanted English food I would suggest you to go a pub or somewhere. They did come round asking if everything was ok so really you should have said something and not slag them off all over Facebook.”
The restaurant’s manager, Shah Munim, has said that he’s written to Tripadvisor to complain about the review.
He also explained the reason the restaurant did not serve traditional Christmas dinners.
He said that it was not worth ‘all the hard work’ to prepare a traditional British Christmas dinner when there had been so few customers ordering it.
“We want to please our customers. We gave them options. And they chose chicken and chips,” he said.
“I fully agree with them, they’re not happy. I did my best,” Mr Munim said.
“But unfortunately after leaving they wrote on Facebook and Tripadvisor. I don’t know why they’re doing that,” he said.
The Ruposhi served around 80 customers on Christmas Day on Saturday, December 25.
One of those customers left a five-star review.
“We came for Christmas day six of us excellent food yet again fantastic service and staff curries were spot on. Thank you for a lovely meal,” they said.
Mr Shah has been running the restaurant for 11 years and says that he has been struggling bringing all of his customers back into the restaurant post-lockdown.
“It’s a very hard time to run a business right now,” he said.
He said that negative reviews can impact his business.
“It’s easy for them to write a review on Tripadvisor but it’s hard to run a business and to keep customers happy,” he said.
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