Restaurant review: MASALA DABBAS (Orpington)

Having just opened earlier this month, Masala Dabbas aims to bring authentic Indian dining to Orpington, on a High Street that is filled to the brim with 'Indian' dishes that have actually been liberally doctored to appease western palates.

Restaurant review: GILGAMESH (Camden)

Gilgamesh advertises itself as a pan-Asian restaurant, bar and nightclub. I visited it with my brother using a LivingSocial deal that I had bought for £34. The deal entitled us to afternoon tea and free-flowing Prosecco for two hours. I personally tend to find LivingSocial deals more honourable than Groupon ones, and the 'unlimited Prosecco for 2 hours' part of the deal appealed to me.

Restaurant review: DISHOOM (Shoreditch)

Dishoom’s reputation precedes itself. Due to great word of mouth, the Shoreditch venue, as with the Covent Garden venue, which I have also been to, doesn’t allow bookings unless the party is of six people or more. If you’re in a party of five people or less, you have to queue on the door, with the length of the queues ranging from half an hour to an indefinite period of time.

The menu claims these prawns are 'succulent'. They tasted dry to me.

Restaurant review: CHAI THALI (Camden)

A few weeks ago, me and my friends from my old work had a much-needed catch-up at Chai Thali. One of my friends, Sarah, had said it was a restaurant that specialized in Indian tapas, at which I was pretty much sold.

Restaurant review: THE CINNAMON (Brick Lane)

I went to The Cinnamon in Brick Lane yesterday with a group of friends from work. Whilst the company was great, the overall experience of dining at The Cinnamon left rather a lot to be desired.

The food was passable. For starters, I had vegetable samosas (pictured above), which, priced at £3.50, was a massive rip-off, considering you can get much larger ones than that pictured at most newsagents for £1 or so. A friend had negotiated a 20% off the overall bill which was excellent, but even with that 20% off, I felt severely short-changed by the tiny samosa.

Also, I'd ordered vegetable samosa and been given lamb ones. As I was with colleagues and didn't want to show my true Gone Girlish colours, I checked my temper. But inside, I was seething. The cheek.

We had to wait what felt like a small eternity for our mains, and the first plate that was offered to me quite noticeably had food on it. As mentioned previously, I was trying not to be a diva, but food hygiene comes higher than public relations in my hierarchy of self-preservation, so I bluntly told the waiter that I wouldn't be eating from that plate and could I please have another one. I was answered with a tut and an eyeroll, but graciously, offered a new plate.

My dish, chicken tikka masala, was, as advertised, mild, and generally tasted pretty decent, so I will give The Cinnamon kudos for that. The dish photographed to the right of it, was what my friend ordered, and I had a little taste of that as well. The potatoes were lovely.

However, the cheesy naan bread was extremely burnt, and I could taste the cheese used was of low quality. Having to dip such starchy, unappetising bread into my tikka masala detracted from the richness of the sauce substantially.

The service was also a goddamn travesty. As mentioned, the two courses took far too long to arrive, with there being an hour between the two courses. I think this was because next to us were a huge party of 20 or so people, and they'd arrived just before us, so the restaurant had to cater for them as well. Which is fair enough. But I think that shows that the restaurant was understaffed for its full capacity, and thus, at busy times, the poor sods who arrive a minute after the previous party feel the brunt of it in terms of a rumbling stomach.

The main waiter who served us also had such an awful chip on his shoulder, that you  would think he was a Chinese waiter in Chinatown. Rolling his eyes at me when he'd had the temerity to offer me a disgusting, filthy plate was a cheek. Every time we tried to beckon him over to take our order, he'd come just to tell us curtly to wait. Charming. And the icing on the cake was at the end, when he'd failed to collate all the receipts and so his calculations didn't add up (although everyone had paid), so he tried to block us from leaving the restaurant whilst he searched for the receipt that he had lost.

All this horrendous service, yet The Cinnamon helped themselves to a tip on the final bill, which worked out to £2 a person. As I said, I was in company, so trying not to show what a shrew I truly was. If I hadn't been with other people, I would have contested that service charge. On the basis of the attitude we'd received, this circus of a restaurant should have been paying us.

Grade: F

Restaurant review: LAL QILA (Goodge Street)

I had a cheeky peruse of TripAdvisor after I went to Lal Qila and prior to beginning my review. I was absolutely gobsmacked to see it was ranked 52nd of all the restaurants in London. Punters must have gone to a different restaurant to me.

Alarm bells rang as soon as I asked if the waiters could hang my coat up for me. Imagine my surprise (and chagrin) to learn that they didn’t have pegs to hang coats up on! What’s the point in having such lavish interiors (as Lal Qila certainly did), if you don’t even have a basic necessity such as coat hangers?

With my mac slung over the back of my chair, we turned to ordering drinks. I distinctly remember ordering a beer, because that's my modus operandi at restaurants, but the waiters seemed to decide to ignore me entirely, and serve me a Coca Cola, under the guise that that was what I asked for. I know damn well what I asked for, and that definitely wasn’t it. When I asked for the correct drink to be presented to me, the waiter went about a bout of trying to re-write history, and convince me that that was what I ordered. It was giving gaslighting.

Now, to the food. To its credit, it definitely wasn’t the worst Indian restaurant I’ve ever been to – that would be Tandoori Nights. But it sure as hell wasn’t close to coming to the best. I had a mellow cheese-infused dish, which was inoffensive but also unexciting. The rice was soft but tasteless and the Na’an bread utterly uninspiring. All in all, Bland with a capital B.

I have pored over the TripAdvisor page and it definitely links the same address of the Lal Qila I went to. Perhaps the 52nd best restaurant in London had to be accessed by walking into a wardrobe in the place I went to, Narnia-style. Because the place I went to definitely wasn’t it.

Grade: D

For more of my restaurant reviews, click here. If you would like me to review your restaurant, drop me an email at lemon_and_lime7@hotmail.com

Restaurant review: BANANA TREE (Soho)

I seem to be frequenting a lot of restaurants in Soho recently. It's just a part of London that I absolutely adore; the hustle and bustle is wonderful, and unlike areas like Shoreditch and Hoxton, it doesn't seem to be so up its own ass. 

Another one was added to the list on the 9th of January, when some Indo-Chinese cuisine was tested. Overall, the results were positive, although the quality of the sauces far eclipsed that of the food.

As you may have gathered by now, I love me some seafood, and in particular, prawns. So a prawn stir-fry seemed the natural option to go for. It was fine, but firstly, I didn’t notice any difference in the taste and way it was prepared from, say, a standard Chinese stir fry (thus casting doubts over the legitimacy of the so-called fusion element of it all), and secondly, the vegetables and herbs were all tossed in rather haphazardly, leaving me to feel the chefs here go by a “bung it all in” philosophy, rather than treating their dishes as an art.

Starters were good, but sadly the portions were left wanting, and, were anyone to pay for this according to the prices on the menu (rather than with TasteCard), then I’d seriously grumble about the meagre quantities.

In terms of value for money, we got the whole meal for £25 using TasteCard, so for cheap and cheerful, Banana Tree gets my thumbs up. Just pay close attention to the menu, and bear in mind that different dishes differ in terms of how well-cooked they are.

Grade: B

For more of my restaurant reviews, click here. If you would like me to review your restaurant, drop me an email at lemon_and_lime7@hotmail.com

Restaurant review: TANDOORI NIGHTS (Covent Garden)

I went to this place a few months ago, but such was the poor memory of it, that I had to give it a while before I could stomach thinking about it again.

I should have seen the warning signs when we walked into the restaurant and it was empty. Tandoori Nights boasts how it's won all these these prizes, but the simple fact of the matter is were it really brilliant, the place should have been bustling at the prime dinner timeslot. Instead, save a few waiters, the place was practically empty.

We had regulation choices: a chicken and a seafood dish, and both were godawful (I distrust any chicken tikki masala in such a sweet sauce) and were left, unfinished. The naan bread was edible but the rice was microwave-standard, at best.

So we weren't particularly impressed with the food, then. But the service, oh god, the service. A particularly pushy guy wouldn't stop hovering around our table and trying to pressure us into ordering more, despite the fact that we'd clearly been none-too-impressed with what we'd eaten so far. Definitely not a culinary experience I intend to revisit.

I'll tell you one positive thing about this place: it sure does make a good case for getting your own meals and consuming them in the comfort - and pleasure of not being rushed while you're trying to enjoy your dinner - of your own home.

Grade: F

Two buffet meals this week.

Diwana, Euston. £6.95 for vegetarian all you can eat.

 

There was a seriously excellent selection of food on offer, and the majority of it was cooked better than you standard bargain basement Chinese buffet. Such was the usage of quorn supplements that, like Kailash Parbat, you didn't notice the lack of meat in your meal. And the fact that it's a buffet means you can stuff your face to your heart's content, for a modest price :)

 

However, what let this place down was the horrendous, horrendous service. Abrupt waiters who didn't register a request and had to be prodded into reminding, and when you did remind them they glared at you like, gee, I don't know, it wasn't their job to serve us or something. One was in my way and didn't even have the manners to step aside. Charming.

 

So, for that, I'll have to give this place a B-. Shame as the food was lovely, but the waiters there really need to be schooled in etiquette, just truthing.

 

Pizza Hut, Oxford Circus. £7.50 for all you can eat.

 

 

I went to Pizza Hut's lunchtime buffet out of nostalgia for when I did it as a kid, but was disappointed to discover that both the quality of the food, and the quantity, is nothing like what I was used to all those year's ago. There was one flavour of pizza that came out consistently: margherita. Also known as the most boring pizza flavour. The pepperoni one tasted flat and flavourless, and the less said about ham and tuna the better. Only the veggie pizza have anything going for it. The salad bar was also extremely paint-by-numbers and dull.

 

Factor in awful service (we ordered bottomless cokes and they seemed extremely reluctant to top them up, knowing that they weren't going to get any extra money for it) and the fact that every time I tried to make eye contact with a waiter, they purposely looked away, and I can safely say I will not be going back to this dive in a hurry.

 

Grade: D

Restaurant review: MASSALA HUT (Euston)

Following the roaring success of Raw Spice, here was an Indian restaurant I was far less impressed with. As with the previous place, I ordered a prawn dish, as I thought I’d compare the quality between the two kitchens. It was distinctly lacking here – there was plenty of jalfrezi, but basically no prawn. 

On closer inspection of the vegetables in my dish, and I’d be extremely surprised if they weren’t past their sell-by-date, and the cooks had clearly piled in the spices thinking “Jalfrezi! Ah! That means spicy!” without any consideration for the customer’s taste buds. 

I was not happy, particularly given the menu makes it sound like they were going to be generous with the prawn quantities. The other dish, the lamb pathia was even worse. Liquidy and runny, it was basically an extremely spicy soup! Such was the consistency and the hotness; it also meant that barely any of it could be eaten. So there’s your waste of food, which only exacerbated my mood (I hate leaving leftovers).

The pilau rice was pretty uninspired, meaning that the highlight of this excuse of a meal was probably the coconut naan bread; the one item the kitchen managed not to ruin And if the bread was the best thing about the culinary experience that is dining at Massala Hut, you know it’s not going to be somewhere I’m recommending to friends.

Grade: E

Restaurant review: RAW SPICE (Hendon)

With a distinctly bar-type vibe to the place and Las Vegas-level brash lighting, Raw Spice was different from any other Indian restaurant I’d been to before. Thanks to a menu that offered a lot of range as well as my mate's Tastecard, I ate extremely well, and huge quantities (with enough to take home for the family), for just £12 covering tip! Glorious!

Between us, for mains, we ordered a lamb dish, a chicken dish, and a prawn dish. We also had two portions of rice (which as you can see in the photo, is a pretty healthy portion), two starters and some naan bread to share. They were all brilliant, and thanks to the kitchen cooking all the meat dishes on mild, they were tangy without causing my nose to run and eyes to water, which is all too common an occurrence when I eat spicy food, unfortunately.

The best dish was the prawn one, which graciously actually had prawns in them (I went to another Indian restaurant the following day and there were about three prawns in total in the plate I’d ordered; disappointing to say the least). The other two meat dishes didn't skimp on actual meat either, which was refreshing, because usually in restaurants they'll excel at a couple of dishes but sell you short on another. No such case here. 

The “chicken lollipops” which we had as one of our starters weren't, as I’d feared, undercooked or over-seasoned, but rather, totally edible as a meat-on-a-stick type thing and didn't even require any sauce, so crunchy and spicy were they on their own. 

Compared to other restaurants in London, booze was also extremely well-priced (in the range of three quid rather than four or five), and the menu boasted some fantastic cocktails and mocktails, all very-well created.

Possibly the only foible with the place was the service, which was a little pushy, a little patronising (we'd arrived before the kitchen opened, 6. We were told that fact, and we gladly said we'd have drinks in the meantime, but then they hammered the point home that the kitchen didn't open until 6, as if we were thick. C'mon now). 

I would also suggest that they could have offered us a wider range of dips to come with the poppadoms (there were two, I'm usually used to three or four in other places). But in terms of food (both palate of flavour and geneorisity of dishes), vibe, and value for money, bung a Tastecard along and you really can’t do much better than Raw Spice.

Grade: A-

For more of my restaurant reviews, click here. If you would like me to review your restaurant, drop me an email at lemon_and_lime7@hotmail.com

Restaurant Review: KAILASH PARBAT (Wembley)

After work a few Wednesdays ago, me and the girls went for a much-needed catch-up in Wembley. I didn’t actually realise that the place we were going to was purely vegetarian, but so well-cooked were the meals that by the time you pay the bill, you don’t even feel that meat was lacking in the dish at all. And, considering what an unadulterated carnivore I am, that’s some feat.

The starters dish, the chaat platter, was probably the most conventional of all the dishes we ordered, a well-balanced mix of carb and sauces, a bit like a more authentic version of poppadoms and their dips. I couldn't help making a mess when eating, but, in my defence, when the food's that good, I'm desperate to get it down me as soon as possible, at the cost of common decorum!

Our colleague ordered that was far too spicy for two of us, but as a compromise we picked the other two, of which one was Indian cottage cheese mix, which I adored. That said, even that was a bit spicy for me, and I had to indulge in a yoghurt drink, twice, to quench the thirst that eating the hot food bought. We were all thoroughly stuffed by the end (with rice to spare), and shelled just £15 each. I was thoroughly satisfied with both of the dishes pictured below - both were textured, appetising, well-cooked and moreish.

Kailash Parbat is, in my opinion, the best Indian restaurant in Wembley. Of course, that statement would be rendered somewhat redundant if you consider that it’s also the only Indian restaurant I’ve been to in Wembley. But despite the lack of competition, what cannot be denied is that this was a great place (terrific portions, unobtrusive service [ironically, this is one of the few places in London that I'd deem worthy of a tip, and paradoxically, one of the few that doesn't help itself to a tip] and delicious dishes), and will certainly take some beating.

 
Grade: A

For more of my restaurant reviews, click here. If you would like me to review your restaurant, drop me an email at lemon_and_lime7@hotmail.com

Restaurant review: AL-DIWAN GRILL (Holloway Road)

On the walk from the Highbury & Islington Tube station to Arsenal’s football ground is Al-Diwan Grill, a restaurant offering all the classic Indian dishes for reasonable prices. 

The inside of the restaurant, as with last week’s Wonderful Patisserie, is nothing special; it feels more like a diner than a restaurant.

However, the food itself is some of the best Indian I’ve tasted. Between two people, we ordered a rice dish, two types of Naan bread, as well as Chicken Tikka Masala and Lamb Madras, and we were both sufficiently full from the quantities served. 

The chicken tikka masala was the less spicy of the two meat dishes served, and, having eaten many a CTM in my University days (usually of the microwaveable meal variety), I consider myself a bit of an authority on dish. What made the one we had here so delicious was probably the generous quantities of oil which the chicken was bathed in as that really brought out the flavour of it, but I have in the past had CTMs wherein the chicken has been woefully undercooked, and there was no danger of that here. The chicken tikka masala passed my test with flying colours.

As for the lamb madras, that too tasted good, and that too, was bathed in oil. This dish was marked with a chilli in the menu, indicating that it was spicier, and whilst the level of hotness wasn’t an issue, I had a huge blunder when I consumed one of the chillis accompanying the meat bowl, stupidly thinking it was a bean. THAT was spicy, and tears streamed down my face and I was snotting like nobody’s business; not attractive. 

Nommy dishes of the week.

I had more sweet dishes than usual this week, due to the canteen at my work producing some phenomenal desserts.

Around the World creation, Haagen-Dazs.

Tiramisu, £1.50, work canteen.

Salmon, potato wedges and salad. £2.95, work canteen.

Pineapple cake, £1.50, work canteen.

Lamb curry, work canteen, £2.95.

Swedish meatballs, £5.45, Ikea canteen.

Chocolate and cream dessert, Ikea canteen, £1.50.

Three restaurant reviews: HÄAGEN-DAZS (Leicester Square), MCDONALD'S and CHOWKI (Piccadilly Circus)

I’ve been to a couple of eateries recently, so a few more reviews.

Häagen-Dazs (Leicester Square)

Häagen-Dazs’ flagship restaurant sits in Leicester Square, where tourists passing by will surely see it, their kids will get excited and ask to go in, and money will be spent, leaving lots of space for profit margins. 

And, if ice cream’s your thing, then you are in for a treat here; the dishes are lovingly prepared and beautifully ornamented, so much so that it almost balances out the overpricedness (but then again, this being Central London, overcharging is somewhat of a requisite). 

For the adults, Häagen-Dazs also do a delightful range of cocktails, in which healthy portions of alcohol are balanced out by slushed-up ice cream. The doses are lethal; I got tipsy after one cocktail! 

Service is okay, pretty much as can be expected for a busy dessert restaurant, without ever venturing into the regions of excellent, making Häagen-Dazs overall, a worthwhile experience, elevated, somewhat surprisingly, by the excellent quality of their drinks rather than their ice creams.

Grade: B+



McDonald's (various locations)

Absolutely ace. Everything in this photo came to just over a tenner, and both me and my brother were completely full - and delighted by the end of it. I cannot get enough of McDonald's! 

Grade: A

Chowki (Piccadilly Circus)

A passable curry eatery with some delicious meat dishes, but negated by waiters who weren't at all proactive at serving, and helped themselves to both a tip and a service charge. 

On the bright side, I ordered the chicken tikka masala, which I thought was thoroughly satisfying, if a little bit too small for the £10.50 price tag - I wolfed it down in a minute. Decent food, just not great service.

Grade: C-

For more of my restaurant reviews, click here. If you would like me to review your restaurant, drop me an email at lemon_and_lime7@hotmail.com