I spent this weekend in London City, one of my most favourite places in the whole world. Apart from the beautiful historical buildings, the museums, the people, one of the things I really love about London is all the halal restaurants :-p. When you live in a town with one halal restaurant, they don't have much incentive to cook tasty food because they know you have no other choice. And because you have no other choice, you tend to keep going back even if you don't like it that much. Therefore, it's nice to go to the city and have so much choice!
I have my favourite London restaurants: Khans, Noodle Oodle, Tayyabs. Of course Nandos is a particular favourite but when you really think about it and realise how much you are spending to eat chicken and chips in a smoky noisy restaurant, you begin to rethink your decision.
As it happens. this weekend we ate somewhere completely new. Chor Bizarre, recommended to me by a friend. I checked the website out first and it looked pretty good, so I thought, what the hey and booked a table for Sunday.
When it came to lunchtime, we were starving way before our reservation but turned up early in the hopes of bagging a table anyway. Lucky for us, the place was completely empty and there was no problem moving our reservation up half an hour. It was all beautifully decorated in indian furniture and art, I immediately fell in love with a marble table with mother of pearl work on it. We got a seat slightly round the corner so that I was hidden from the staff but my friend was clearly visible (yes this is important).
The menus were lovely, but our favourites were nowhere to be seen on them. Ok, you don't go to a new restaurant to eat something old but it makes it easier to go with something you recognise so you know what to expect. We took a while to decide what to get, seeing as everything cost 3 times more than it would in any other London Indian restaurant and we weren't quite sure what things were. This wasn;t helped by 3 different members of staff coming round the corner at different times to ask if we were ready to order. When we did finally order it took a while for the food to get to us. A £6 kebab starter consisted of 2 burger sized kebabs, a little chutney and a little shredded cabbage, a little on the bland side although the chutney helped. My paapri chaat starter however was lovely and a generous portion.
Several times, a waiter or sour faced waitress peeped round the table to eye our table, presumably to check if we had eaten. I considered this strange seeing as he could clearly see my friend who was still eating. Eventually, around perhaps his 3rd peek, we had finished with the starters and he came and swept our dishes away.
When the meal came, as soon as I saw the prawn curry I ordered (as it was the hottest thing on the menu) I just knew the damn thing had coconut in it, something that I am very allergic too. I cursed myself for not having asked before ordering but in my defence, coconut was not listed in the ingredients beneath the name in the menu. Anyway, one little taste was enough to make my lips itch and I had to return it. The waitress immediately said "you should have told us before" making me feel even more guilty and a waiter brought me the menu after about 5-10 minutes so I could choose something else. Interesting that it took him so long seeing as there was only one other table occupied there and 3 serving staff. Even more interestingly, he didn;t even let me look at it. He asked whether I would like chicken or lamb and how spicy I want the curry and then left to tell the chef. Which made me wonder whether every item on the menu had coconut in it. I was scared to death that I would end up having to pay for both curries. Luckily, I didn't, but I didn't find that out till I got the bill. My friend had a chicken tikka thing which came with a huge lettice leaf, a few dry slices of cucumber and half a tomato. Lovely.
When my waiter came 10 minutes later with a red chicken curry we asked for some chutney for the chicken. Looking immensely surprised that someone wouldn't want to eat dry chicken with dry naan without any sauce, he promptly set a stand on our table with 2 pots of chutney and a pot of mango pickle. I didn't quite understand why he hadn't given it to us in the first place seeing as it's not something we would have had to order off the menu.
Throughout our meal, the waiters and waitress constantly checked up on us, strolling onto our side of the restaurant just to have a look at our table and the food on it. It was extremely off putting and annoying. Firstly, we weren't exactly eating slowly seeing as we were starving and had waited a good half hour for just the starters and secondly, the restaurant was still empty but for one other table. If it was a busy time I might understand a little why they were so anxious for us to finish our food, but it made no sense whatsoever when the place is silent as a tomb especially since we had a reservation anyway. The waiters were quite polite but I found this particular behaviour very rude. They didn't need to hover over us to see if we'd finished, like I said they could see my friend still eating without having to come down to us to check.
My curry was ok, a little bland and watery but mango pickle helped with that. The curry and also the rice came in cute little pots. I have to admit the presentation of the dishes was quite nice. In fact, presentation wise, the restaurant and the food would get 4-5 stars from me. It's a beautiful place to eat beautifully presented food. When it comes to the taste of the food however... well the little takeaway down my street doesn't look so bad now. I was extremely disapointed that my £14 curry tasted of nothing. The food sorely lets the place down.
Even though it's nice to eat somewhere lovely, you don't go to a restaurant to look at it, you go there to eat. And if the food's not up to standard (especially considering the exhorbitant prices they were charging!) then there really is no point in going is there.
I wish we had just gone to Khan's. It's not nearly as well decorated and the atmostphere isn't as magical but the food is absolutely delicious. My favourites are the eye-watering hot curries, Chicken chilli masala and jalfrezi.
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