Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Tag: Turtle Bay

  • Chelmsford – Turtle Bay

    Chelmsford – Turtle Bay

    Turtle Bay were once my favourite UK chain, serving decent Caribbean food which had a bit of spice to it. I felt that they went downhill a bit across the country last year and I’ve mostly ignored them since. However, their app gave me a free meal earlier in the year in Norwich which was rather lovely, and they’ve now sent another on-line voucher. I certainly won’t complain.

    The interior is bright and decorative, with the staff member who served me being pro-active and engaging.

    Some considerable thought has gone into the design of the toilets.

    This is Turtle Bay’s own milk stout, which I think is made by Hunter’s Brewery. Tasted OK, sweet and creamy, although not a great richness of flavour. But, it’s nice to see restaurants making an effort like this and I’m not sure why the Caribbean has a history of stouts, perhaps it’s down to Guinness Foreign Extra Stout.

    The meal which Turtle Bay kindly gave to me, which is the half a jerk chicken with spiced fries. The chicken was very tender and fell straight off the bone, with the portion seeming quite generous to me. Fries were decent, crispy on the exterior and fluffy on the interior, but I still have no idea what bloody use that watermelon is to the meal. But, perhaps it’s authentic, I don’t know. The chicken was a bit blackened in places, but I like that, I’m not a fan of soggy chicken skin, I like it firm and a bit burnt.

    I’m not sure that Turtle Bay is as good as it once was, but it’s certainly better than it was at its worst. The service here was above standard and they delivered a clean and comfortable environment. The Grace Jerk BBQ Sauce in the bottle which is on the table is still beautiful, I suspect I went through the majority of the bottle. Anyway, since this meal cost me the grand sum of just under £5 for the beer, I certainly can’t complain and I note that the recent reviews for the restaurant are pretty positive. So, hopefully the future for Turtle Bay is bright in these challenging times.

  • Norwich – Turtle Bay

    Norwich – Turtle Bay

    I used to really like Turtle Bay, but the quality seemed to slide a bit in 2019, but I’m hopeful that things are improving once again. The reviews of the Norwich outlet are still holding up, there are a few negatives, but nothing which suggests any serious problems.

    Anyway, I hadn’t planned on going back in the near future, but just before Christmas, Turtle Bay sent a lot of people with the app £10 off their meal or drinks. When I was away in Poland, there was an update from the app suggesting that I use it for a £10 lunch deal, with no minimum purchase. So, since the offer was running until the middle of February, I thought that I should make the most of it.

    The welcome was efficient and polite, with the staff member confirming that there was no minimum purchase with my voucher, I thought that it was best to double check. I went for the drink of the home-made fizzy mango, served in a bottle with an elastic band around it. It was a generous portion, consisting of mango, lemon juice and grapefruit crush. I got quite a taste of thick mango essence towards the bottom, since neither I nor the restaurant had stirred the drink particularly well. However, it tasted fine.

    The lunch menu gives a choice of a burger or roti, a side and a soft drink for £10. The pulled chicken roti was fine, the chicken was tender, the avocado was soft and there were some pleasant flavours. The chips also had a little spice to them, but even as part of the lunch deal, the pricing is still a little punchy for the amount of food. If ordered in the evening, this would have cost nearer £15 for the three component parts, and I’m not sure that’s particularly good value for money.

    One element that moderately surprises me is that they’re not pushing their core dishes at lunch-time, the offer is limited to burgers and rotis. I’d rather they’d offered something such as jerk chicken, or one of the curries, even at a lower price, to get a little taste of the Caribbean. I thought that I was more getting the taste of Dudley, nothing wrong with it, but there was no elements of surprise with the tastes and textures. I didn’t work out what was in that little dish, but I did liven up the proceedings by adding sauce to everything.

    The service was effortlessly polite throughout, the restaurant was clean (other than the sauce bottles hadn’t been cleaned) and the environment was relaxed and comfortable. I can’t much complain about anything as the restaurant had given me the entire meal for free as part of their app deal, but I still can’t help missing Turtle Bay’s meals of old which were packed with tastes and flavours.

  • Birmingham – Turtle Bay

    I visited the Turtle Bay in the centre of Birmingham as I had a complete set of rewards stamps which got me a free starter, side and main. I’d add, as a background, Turtle Bay was my favourite chain of restaurants as it was quirky, innovative, reasonably priced and the staff were engaging and welcoming.

    The chain mildly irritated me by scrapping their loyalty scheme and replacing it with an inferior one a few months ago. They did send push notifications out to those with the app, but I checked at the time and they decided against mentioning it on social media. I have to admit to wondering whether their decision was financial, but it was sufficient for me to temporarily abandon going to Turtle Bay.

    The loyalty scheme did though rollover my rewards so I kept three free dishes, and I’ve wanted to pay a visit to Turtle Bay as I’ve been disappointed hearing three people in different locations telling me that the standards have fallen substantially in recent months. I didn’t quite believe them, so that’s the back story of why I visited this well reviewed branch of the chain.

    There’s also one other reason, which is that I had poor food in the Peterborough branch last year and I felt guilty that I wrote up a negative review of it (especially when I saw the access numbers for that post), and have yet to post about my many positive experiences from the chain. So, I was hoping for lots of positivity on this visit.

    The interior was large and bright, with the normal quirky and fun decoration. The service was fine, with a prompt welcome and I was taken to a table without any delay. And, being positive here, the service was actually very good as it was attentive, thoughtful and pro-active. The staff member also made an effort to engage with me, making conversation and I felt that she did a good job at trying to build up a rapport with me. Obviously being British there’s a limit to how much engagement I want with anyone, but this was well measured.

    I’d also add, before my comments about the food, that everything was brought out after a reasonable amount of time. My drinks were at the appropriate temperature and tasted fine, with plates also cleared away promptly. So, in terms of technical service, everything was fine.

    The menu has changed since my last visit, and my first impressions were that it didn’t feel as exciting or as on-trend. There seems to have been a slip back to generic menu items and a rather complex menu structure that has moved away from the previous much simpler one.

    This is the chilli squid, which was well presented and the portion size was reasonable. The squid was over-cooked and so rubbery, but it was evenly battered and the coating had a pleasant taste. The jerk mayo added some extra flavour, although I’m not sure why they’ve put so much mayo and mole on top of the squid, as this just made the coating soft instead of crisp.

    This is the new jerk chicken and it was possibly the worst attempt at a main course that I’ve experienced in my last few hundred restaurant visits. The quality of the chicken itself was exceptionally poor, it oozed out water and was entirely flavourless. There was clearly no attempt to marinate this chicken in anything, it’s just been briefly cooked in the sauce. I would say in the restaurant’s defence that it was entirely cooked through, but I can’t recall such watery chicken.

    I don’t know what the jerk gravy was, it tasted like water and just made the chicken wet. In terms of flavouring, these was absolutely nothing here, with no evidence of any jerk seasoning at all. One reason I liked Turtle Bay is that they have some interesting sauces, so the only way to try and bring any flavour to this dish was to pour on sauce myself. Although that succeeded in me just eating poor quality food in a sauce….

    The presence of the watermelon was ridiculous, there were no flavours for it to try and moderate and its presence is perhaps a little pointless at the best of times. This is seemingly a new innovation from the restaurant, but I’d rather they just served chicken which has flavour. I’m not sure why they’re removed the side which they once gave with the jerk chicken, but I was disappointed given that this was once my favourite dish. I didn’t bother to finish much of the chicken, it was a waste of calories.

    The spiced fries which I ordered as a side were entirely devoid of any spicing, they just tasted like cheap and generic oven chips. Luckily I had put lots of sauce on the equally bland chicken, so that meant at least I could add some taste to the fries.

    In terms of the service, there was nothing wrong here. But, unfortunately, the news I’ve received from others about the decline of Turtle Bay certainly seems to have been borne out here as well. Normally I would have queried the dishes with the staff, but I felt that the decision to serve this quality of food was deliberate from the company and so I was content in just leaving Turtle Bay as quickly as possible.

    Personally, I found this quite dreadful, but I’m conscious that other on-line reviews don’t seem to be universally negative, so perhaps this was an entire aberration and my experience was a one-off. I’d already stopped organising group meals here, but I suspect that this is the end of my Turtle Bay visits until I start hearing positive things once again…..

  • Peterborough – Turtle Bay

    I had a heap of Turtles, which is the loyalty scheme of the Caribbean restaurant Turtle Bay, so I thought that I’d visit their Peterborough outlet for the first time. It’s one of my favourite chains as I like the food and service and it’s centrally located in the city.

    A nice bright interior, although it was quieter at lunch-time that I had expected. I had rather thought they might have some Christmas lunch parties going on, but that didn’t seem to be the case. The service was though friendly and prompt, and the team member did make an effort to make conversation.

    This is the mango, lemon juice and grapefruit crush, which had the irritating attribute of a straw which didn’t reach to the bottom of the drink. The drink was quite refreshing, but it lacked any depth of flavour until I got to the bottom and I hit an almost syrup of mango. Now that did taste good, but it was quite hard to extract it with the straw not being long enough and with the risk of all the ice falling out if I tipped the bottle back too far. The choice of drinking vessel really is stupid in that regard, a glass would have made this much better.

    The Trini curry chicken at the front is part of the chain’s one pot options. The chicken looked excellent in terms of the presentation, but the meat was entirely tasteless and seemed to have been cooked from frozen as it was too watery. The chicken hadn’t taken in any of the sauce and so it appeared to have just been dumped in rather than having been allowed to at least have some pretence of a marinade. The dish was lacking in any spice, which was an attribute that was listed on the menu, although the rice had a pleasant flavour. There wasn’t enough sauce and what there was simply didn’t have any depth of taste. The roti bread served with it was adequate, but nothing beyond that.

    At the back of the above photo are the dirty curry fries, with this dish also being adequate at best. The chips were limp, there wasn’t much curry sauce on top of them, the chips at the base were mushy and it lacked flavour or texture.

    Service in the restaurant was though efficient and polite, and technically it was perfect in terms of the check back, prompt delivery and engagement. Although the meal being served after just a few minutes of ordering had worried me, I’m not sure that Turtle Bay need to try and replicate JD Wetherspoon in that regard.

    Overall, this was a pretty unimpressive meal and I do wonder whether chains can risk this sort of blandness given how competitive the market is. On the bright side, this was effectively an entirely free meal so I didn’t lose out, but it doesn’t encourage me to return.