After a brief weekend away with my girlfriend we had a hankering for something to eat the moment we got off the plane. Naturally the first thing I hanker for when travelling abroad is a good curry. Europe has never been able to do a good curry in my experience, so on the drive back from the airport we decided we were a little too tired to cook so we put an order through at Royal Spice. 

Royal Spice is one of my favourite Indian take away’s in Cambridge. In the past it has always been punctual, good value, and had the best (and most generous) food portions. So I was well looking forward to getting stuck in after a long day travelling as we were both dead tired.

What better thing to come home too?

We managed to get home about half an hour after ordering it in the car, we had timed it just right…or so we thought! 

Usually this would leave the average Indian restaurant about 15 minutes to get to your house in good time. Royal Spice being located on the other side of Milton Road means that it shouldn’t take too long for them to get to us! 

After an hour of waiting we were starting to wonder where our food had gotten too. We phoned up Royal Spice and asked where our food was. Apparently it was going to be with us in another 45 minutes on top of the 60 minutes we had already been waiting. Naturally this is completely unacceptable. We had people in the same house as us who ordered 30 minutes after we did who were receiving their food. This is particularly teasing considering they too had ordered Indian food so we had to sit there and watch them eat it.

We ordered through Just Eat, so I thought it might have been a problem on their end. We contacted the website and talked to one of their people over the “chat” option. They checked their system and stated that the order went through no problem. 

The people at Just Eat couldn’t be more helpful, they were polite, professional and even went to the trouble of calling up Royal Spice for us to see what the problem was. The “chat” feature was free, easy to use and no waiting in queues, I highly recommend it if you have any trouble with online orders in the future.

Once they had talked to the good people at Royal Spice the plot started to thicken, apparently, whether this is true or not, they had some vehicle troubles so it was taking longer to make deliveries. 

The people at Just Eat offered a £5 refund for the trouble, though by this point I was tired from travelling all day and incredibly hungry, but it was a good gesture from Royal Spice and Just Eat, though personally, I would have just preferred to have my food!

Nearly two hours later our food arrived from a man who looked like he had been rushing around a lot, very apologetic. We took our food and he was on his way. 

Curry achieved! 

The food itself was fine, though not the blinding high standards I come to remember from Royal Spice, which added insult to injury. 

It seems that vehicle trouble can happen to anyone, especially a small business like Royal Spice, so I have decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and not review the experience but merely share it. There will be no score, or description of the food. 

I want to thank the good people at Just Eat for their help, they made a very stressful situation that much easier and managed to convince the good people at Royal Spice to compensate me for my troubles. 

I will be coming back soon and giving them a second chance as part of my “Indian restaurant take away tour of Cambridge”. 

Thanks for reading!