Alcove

I felt the need to leave a review for this restaurant even though it’s almost been a year since my wife and I had dinner there. I’ve had 7+ years of experience of serving (as well as other restaurant experience) and this is BY FAR the WORST customer service I have ever experienced. We arrived for dinner, and there was one bartender and no hosts or servers. The bartender was kind, but could not handle the amount of service for a dinner rush on her own. We were the second table to arrive for supper, and we put our order not in long afterwards. She recommended a drink for my wife and she figured it would be nice. However, the drink took at least 20 minutes to be brought out. We ordered our food and it took (and I kid you not as I checked my watch) 55 minutes from the time we ordered our food. While we were waiting for our dinner to be brought out, (about 30 minutes in) about 4 other tables filled up, and any table that ordered appetizers received them before we received our meals. Meanwhile, there were 3 people in line waiting to pick up food they ordered over the phone, and no one was there to help them. I constantly made eye contact with this one gentlemen and we continually kept making faces due to the sheer insanity and lack of customer care this restaurant has. On top of that, once our meals came out, my wife’s plate was not what she had ordered and both of our plates were not warm, but COLD (I usually wouldn’t complain about temperature but this night was out of control). They didn’t even refill our water cups, even after asking repeatedly. I could go on and on about all of this, but the reality is is that there were no apologies made to any of the customers, and no attempts in accommodating the customers. The food was not that bad, but they need to hire more employees to provide their customers with a decent experience. I wanted to talk out in the middle of dinner, and looking back on it, it’s probably what they need to experience to change their business’ practices. If I had cash on me, I would have paid for the drink and walked out.

Let me start off by saying that the alcove is not an Indian restaurant. The alcove is now a martini bar. They have the worst customer service that I have ever experienced in a long time in Richmond. I came tonight for a networking event. I was told that if I spent $ 20 my parking will be validated. However nobody here seems to know what I’m talking about. Did I mention that I have an email?! Second of all the waitstaff got my order wrong. I ordered jerk chicken wings, but instead I got jerk chicken. The bartender came over with an attitude about my food. I ate a couple bites and I sent it back because it was too spicy. When I try to get my jerk wings I was told who sends back a plate of half eaten food. Well it wouldn’t of been half eaten if you got my order right to begin with! All I know is the last three establishments that have been in this building have all failed. And I will not recommend this place to anyone. The food is overpriced, the customer service sucks, and they have a really bad attitude. All I know is that I would never been to this way if I was at the cheesecake factory, or the tobacco company which is right down the street.

Went here for birthday brunch and the service sucks! The bartender acted as if she didn’t want to help us. Besides the crappy service the food was good!

First time I ordered two entrees (both vegetarian) and a few different types of bread. The entrees were ok tasting, not great, and they gave us only the cheapest of the breads i ordered (roti).
The second time (week before last) i ordered Navratan Korma and vegetable biriyani. The order took over an hour to get to my house when they told me it would take 30 min. The korma was ok, but the biriyani was inedible (overly spiced and salty, threw it out). Bread order was messed up again (again only roti). Then, i got to the bottom of the rice container and there was a COCKROACH.
Needless to say, never eating here again. I called to get a refund, but they didn’t follow through with removing the credit card charge. Now i see they are closed and switching owners.

Alcove is exactly what I was looking for when it comes to a workday lunch place. If you go to Alcove with the right expectations, you won’t be disappointed either.
Alcove provides tasty lunch buffet for a fair price with the option to carry out your food. No bells, no whistles, just tasty food, including vegetarian options. All of the items I’ve tried so far have been very well spiced, and the naan was perfectly fine as well. The décor is also fairly nice, as it’s recycled from the location’s days as «A2 Asian Restaurant».
What they DON’T do is lunchtime delivery (dinner only) or super fast service a la Jimmy John’s. Since I tend to only go either a little early (11:30) or a little after the rush (1:00 pm), I haven’t had any problems with the service I’ve received. I was in and out in under 5 minutes, which is good enough for me.
The people who work there are all very kind and friendly. They were even crazy-​nice enough to give me an actual silverware knife to-​go when they ran out of plastic ones!
This location has had quite the identity crisis in the last few years since the old Chinese buffet left, but I think Alcove might be «the One» to survive in this location by sticking to the tasty/​cheap lunch buffet niche.

Food was GREAT. Went here for dinner on a weekday and had the place to ourselves. The staff were all nice and accommodating. Definitely will be back for the quality of the food.

Understaffed at $ 10 lunch buffet. Food was fine and you can definitely get in and out. No seating offered by staff and no sign that says seat yourself. No naan offered to me, although I saw other tables get some. Glass of water came halfway through, but never asked if I wanted anything else. tables were 80−90% full, atmosphere is contemporary.

My first review for 2015 features the quaint little spot called Alcove. My colleagues had to beg and plead with me to go. I’m the furthest thing from a fan of Indian Food as you can get. After a lot of arguing and peer pressure, I felt it was my Unilocal Elite duty to give this place a chance.
I was told they updated the menu to a buffet style. We walked in and made a bee line to the buffet line. Fellow patrons were very polite but there was an unspoken fervor to want to eat. Like a subdued pack of wild tigers patiently waiting for their portion of zebra.
Having no idea what the dishes were called, I just put on my plate anything that looked good. I scooped up some of the orange thing, the green thing, and the yellow rice with meat thing. Little barbequed smoked chicken thing; I threw that on there too!
After the first bite my mouth exploded with flavor. WOW! The yellow rice dish (chicken boneless Biryani) was incredibly aromatic and spicy with an amazing multi-​layered flavor profile. It was so good I pretty much inhaled it.
The green thing (chicken Saag) was equally delicious and had the perfect balance of flavors. The orange one (chicken Tikka Masala) was just like the others; perfectly seasoned. The word is out because the place was packed (1÷9÷15). My colleagues said it wasn’t like this before. Quite the contrary, it was usually pretty dead in this place from what I hear. Whatever change was made it seems to be working. I love when a place turns things around and delivers great tasting food!
Put it to you like this — Mr. Keith W. created a Unilocal account just to write a review for this place. Keith, if you’re reading this that was a smashing good review! Please write more!

Beyond slow service in an empty restaunt I will never return. I didn’t use 2 peices of silverware and the guy (after I finished my meal) takes the silverware, wipes it off with a napkin and puts it back in the tray with the «clean» silverware. The food is okay here, but this practice is poor hygiene and gross. He doesn’t know if I have a skin condition on my hands. If I wiped my nose and touched them, if I coughed on them. Yuck!!! Who knows who else’s germs I got. Won’t be back.

I love them!!! I usually come for dinner on a weekend and it’s always pretty quiet. This confuses the heck out of me because the food is so delicious! They just got a lunch buffet which I’m (unfortunately) not going to be able to attend since I work out of town. There is often a dinner special too, but I ways get chicken tikka masala with garlic naan.
The average dish is between $ 10 – 14 but it’s a very generous portion.
Nicely decorated restaurant that is great for quiet meals. One of Richmond’s hidden treasure.

This review is for the lunch buffet exclusively.
I work right around the corner from here so when I walked by one day and saw that there is now a flat fee lunch buffet for $ 10, I had to give it a try.
–Food: The way the lunch buffet works here is on a rotation basis. There are a pool of items that may wind up on the menu, and the day you go might offer different items than the last. Their full buffet menu, as listed on their site:
Chicken Tikka Masala Or Butter Chicken (any one)
Fish Curry Or Goat Curry Or Chicken Curry (any one)
Veg Biryani Or Egg Fried Rice (any one)
Dhal
Veg Appetizer
Veg Curry
Curd Rice
House Dessert
Naan
Raitha
Mint Chutney
Basmati Rice
I had the Chicken Tikka Masala, Fish Curry, Naan, and some of the rice dishes. I enjoyed the aforementioned and the Lemon Rice a lot, and taste as good as any other Indian food I’ve had. I don’t eat it enough to be able to compare it, but the spices seemed right and everything tasted fresh enough for a buffet.
I really want to try the Goat Curry and hope that next time I go they have this, but really if any of the curies are as good as the Fish one I had was, they’re all probably great choices. The naan was nice and hot with a nice crisp to it.
–Cost: $ 10 for an all you can eat buffet is pretty reasonable. Not a huge selection of items, but you can eat all you want, and what I had was good, so I say it’s worth it. I for one like trying new items and a small buffet like this is a good way to get into other types of food.
–Atmosphere: The interior isn’t gigantic, but it’s pretty big for downtown. The seating was comfortable enough and the place was clean. I also went at 1:30 PM on a weekday, so there wasn’t much of a crowd.
–Service: Following up on the «not much of a crowd» note, I was one of two parties dining there. It’s hard to mess up serving one other person, so I don’t have the «zomg horrendous service!» comments that some people do. I will say I had to ask for some naan though, and I don’t know if that is normal or not.
–Overall: Alcove will likely make it into my normal lunch rotation because of it’s location and lunch buffet. Is a contender for weekend or weeknight stops? Probably not, but really just because it’s out of the way from my house. If you’re in the area though and have the chance to check out the lunch buffet, I say give it a go.
Overall, probably a 3.5ish, but the naan and chicken tikka masala is so good, I’ll round up.

I ordered lunch online for delivery a couple weeks back. An hour later I received a call that they were not doing delivery that day and asked if I could come pick it up. I couldn’t, so I asked them to cancel the order and issue a refund since I had already paid through paypal. They said no problem. A week later, the refund had still not been issued so I called to see if they could either issue the refund or deliver the original order that day for lunch. I thought this was pretty reasonable and was trying to be very polite. This was at 11am and they guy on the phone said they could deliver around 4pm that day. Seriously? I told him that wouldn’t work, that I needed either the refund or to have the food delivered for lunch. He said he would check with the managers and call me back. It has been another week, still have not gotten the refund or the food…

3.5 to 4 stars is probably right for this place. The reviews for this place are generally spot on. The food is great but the service is, as others have said, appalling and horrendous. However, when compared to other Indian places in the area, this place ranks right near the top when it comes to the food.
First, the good. We ordered three dishes and all of them were really good. The chicken biryani is authentic and one of the best I’ve ever had. They don’t just use food coloring but they use a healthy amount of saffron which is what gives biryani an authentic yellow and brown color. The biryani also is very spicy but in a good way. The chicken 65 is amazing. You can smell the spice coming off the dish when we opened the container (we ordered take out but more on that later). Lastly, the rogan josh is a tomato based lamb dish that was good as well.
Now, the bad. I’ve been here three times. The first time I came during lunch with a colleague and we walked out. They only had one person working but it took him five minutes to come out from the kitchen. Once he did come out, he told us to take whatever table we wanted but all the tables were dirty. When he cleaned one off for us, we looked around and realized this was going to take more than an hour so we got up and left. The second time, we went in on a Saturday afternoon and were maybe two of eight people total in the restaurant. The service was passable but by no means great. Today we decided to carry out and this may be the way to go. We ordered by phone. I got there, waited about 3 minutes and they had our food ready to go. However, while I was waiting, I saw a man, eating alone, drop a $ 20 bill on the table and walk out before the bill came. He only ordered one dish so the $ 20 probably covered it. My guess is that he was tired of waiting for the bill.
This is one of those food v. service deals. Great food. Terrible service. Ultimately, I would recommend that you definitely order the chicken biryani and chicken 65 for take out because the food is definitely worth it.

I was worried about all the negative reviews I’ve read about Alcove on Unilocal,but I must say, I was actually pretty impressed. As an Indian myself, I’m pretty picky about my Indian food and I’ll say that Alcove passed my test. We ordered Chicken Tikka Makhani and Vegetable Korma, and also a few Garlic Naan. Everything was pretty dang good. There wasn’t any music playing and it was super quiet inside, which was kind of weird. About halfway through the meal someone started playing Reggae… an odd yet hilarious choice. Anyway, I am THRILLED that we have Indian food downtown now, and will certainly be back. Can’t wait for them to start serving Dosa (the owner said it’s happening)!

The food was decent. The service was APPALLING.
7:18pm: I placed a delivery order through their website. I received an email confirmation that said 45 – 60 minutes.
8:30pm: No sign of the delivery. I called to check on the order, and I was told that there was no delivery available. (Wait, so if I hadn’t called, no one was going to tell me my delivery was never coming?) She asked me if I could come pick up the food and when I could be there. I said 15 minutes and headed over.
8:50pm: I arrive at Alcove and explain that I’m there to pick up my order. They apologize and say it’s not ready yet and will be another 10 – 15 minutes. (Makes sense, because I only placed the order 90 min ago.) They offer me 10% off my order ($ 5). I go to wait in the car.
9:05pm: I venture back inside, foolishly thinking my order will be ready any minute. Nope. Someone sheepishly offered me a mango lassi at the bar (which was kind and distracted me from my growing hunger).
9:15pm: The food is FINALLY ready to go, and I get my $ 5 discount back in cash (since I had prepaid online with a card).
9:30pm: I get home and realize the 2^nd order of naan that I paid for did not make it into the bag. Guess my discount was actually $ 3.
AVOID AVOID AVOID. I don’t know what the heck is going on there, but a restaurant cannot operate that way and survive for long.

The food wasn’t terrible. That’s the best thing I can say. The service was so bad I was tempted to walk out in the middle of dinner. My husband’s pepper goat (which was pretty good — I never had goat before) came 10 minutes before my lamb biryiani. Also they set the goat down with no rice, no bread, just this plate of goat and peppers. We had to ask for some rice so it would be a complete meal. (Rice was pretty good). On top of it there was a huge confusion on part of the waitstaff as to whom ordered what. It seemed they had this problem with almost every table in the house.
I saw people who came in 20 minutes after us getting their food before us. If my food was going to take a longer amount of time it would have been courteous if they let us know when we placed the order, also it’s so unprofessional to not have all the food come out at the same time.
When my biryani finally came it was too spicy (it’s not a spicy dish, traditionally) but it was fresh and tasted good for what it’s worth. By that time my husband had almost finished eating. Great, I love eating alone with company.
I had to ask repeatedly to get a single refill on my water. Soda is served in cans with glasses of ice, no fountain. No free refills.
The naan was good, a little thin, but fresh and tasty, but overpriced in my opinion. Our waiter seemed to forget about us for long periods of time, and we ultimately had to flag down another server to get our check.
So this place might be good for carry out, but be prepared to deal with some frustration if you want a sit down meal.

In short, the food is just ok and the service is horrendous.
Food: good amount of vegetarian options, as expected, but watery and a little bland. The chana masala, which I order at each Indian restaurant that I go to as a litmus test, is like watery soup. Naan and rice are good, as is the paneer curry.
Menu: the lunch menu is difficult to distinguish. Needs some revamping.
Service: omg. The service. I’ve been twice. Once for dinner as solo diners and once for a lunch rush. Both times it took so long to get our order taken, to actually take the order, get the check, get to go boxes, water isn’t refilled… Maybe they need more staff during the lunch rush? I don’t know what the excuse is for when we are the only customers and the waiter awkwardly sits a few tables over…
I went twice and will never go again. I had such high hopes!

The Food
My dining companion and I both ordered lunch specials. They came with naan, which was fine, and rice, which was unseasoned jasmine rice with ghee or butter – no cardamom pods or cloves were added to the rice.
The entrees were lack luster. My vindaloo had very little heat and none of the flavor I associate with vindaloo, tangy with a mixture of spices. The tomato-​based sauce tasted like canned pasta sauce with a hit of pepper sauce: think SpaghettiOs sauce with a dash of Tabasco.
My dining companion ordered palak paneer, which was equally unimpressive. The spinach was pureed and foamy and lacked seasoning.
An ordered lassi was never delivered, so I cannot report on that.
The Service
There were two servers waiting on the busy lunch rush with no apparent system or order. The servers did not appear to have assigned tables, so we were addressed with overlap but really never served by either staff member.
We initially were not given menus before asking to take our orders. Our water was not refilled without request, which was difficult in itself because we did not know whom to ask. An ordered lassi was never delivered – and at the end of the meal a server dismissed this lack of delivery as fortuitous because «the food is so filling.»
Alcove is located in the middle of the downtown weekday lunch staple area, where everyone from the surrounding offices goes for lunch, which is why I was surprised that the server could not split a check.
We were not given checks, as everything was done electronically by tablet, though receipts were brought for us to sign – we did not sign directly on the tablet. The server split the check in half, regardless of the difference of the cost of the meals. She said that the check-​splitting was «how they test friendships.»
Even though my office is on the same block, and I really enjoy Indian cuisine, I will not return. Alcove is not even worth the convenience of proximity.

Awesome restaurant :-)
Kudos to the chef Arulmani :)

I don’t give 5’s often but Alcove really is as good as it gets for Indian food in downtown Richmond. It may also be the only Indian restaurant in downtown Richmond but it would still rank highly beyond.
Was a little worried due to the reviews about the service and it «not being ready» to open but was very pleased. The interior is nice dark furniture. There are empty shelves behind the bar but really didn’t bother us. The waiter was very pleasant, talkative and knew the menu. They had paper menus with most of the prices and for things that didn’t (drinks) he apologized for. He also apologized for written out bills/​check which didn’t personally bother me. And there were real plates not paper plates and silverware and cloth napkins.
Now for the food, the best part! We tried chicken wings, chicken korma, chicken vindaloo and butter paneer. We were all very happy with everything and the flavor profile was very distinct for each. The korma was creamy and mild, the butter paneer was a little different than other paneers with tomato based sauces, and the vindaloo was a bit tart as described.
I am a big fan of Lemon Indian and Anohka and I believe Alcove has comparable food. The prices are about on par of Lemon.
To make things even better there is a 20% off coupon until mid February.