Blah Blah Blah and Indian food...

[lia]

My first trip to London. I've been invited out to dinner to a vegetarian restaurant called Blah Blah Blah that's near Shepherd's Bush on Saturday, and Friday night I suggested Indian near our hotel in Covent Garden.

Any reviews of the former or suggestions for the latter?

Any other must-eats?

[battleofthebulge]

Here are reviews on london-eating; generally pretty positive:

http://www.london-eating.co.uk/268.htm

Sarah

[June Pickering]

A friend took me to Blah, Blah, Blah about 4 years ago. So... my review isn't very current and I'd go with more recent ones. It was a very low-key place and the food was Ok but nothing special. With a new chef, this all could be quite different now. As I now live over here, please let us know what you thought.

If you want upscale Indian, I can recommend Amaya, Zaika or The Cinnamon Club. Almost any Indian restaurant in London is better than anything I ever had in NYC.

[Winot]

There's a new-ish Indian on Great Queen St that has received positive reviews - Moti Mahal (sp?).

[rjs1]

There's a new-ish Indian on Great Queen St that has received positive reviews - Moti Mahal (sp?).

←

And some very negative ones...

A Covent Garden old stager which I've always found very reliable is the Punjab at 80 Neal Street. Lamb with fresh fenugreek and chicken with pomegranate (sp?) are both recommended.

It was founded in 1949 and moved to Neal Street in 1951; it must be one of the oldest Indian restaurants in the UK.

I remember when I lived nearby in the '90s that the old boy who started it was still there every night, sitting near the door keeping an eye on everything while his grandsons did the work. He seldom moved, but if anything wasn't absolutely right he beckoned to a grandson and told them in no uncertain terms to sort it out. Then he wasn't there anymore and Sital, one of his grandsons, told me his grandfather had gone back to India for a holiday. A few weeks later he told me that the old boy had died out there. I commiserated and Sital said "well, it's sad, but he was 101". Quite an advertisement for the preservative powers of curry...

[naebody]

(First time poster, long time reader.)

I've been going to Blah Blah Blah regularly for about five years, on and off, despite not being a herbivore. Like all small local places, the quality varies depending on who's working the stove: it was outstanding about three years ago, before the head chef got one of the waitresses pregnant and they disappeared off to Canada. The previously absent owner, a New Zealand surfer type, turned up for a while to use the place as his front room, and the quantity-to-quality ratio changed drastically towards the former. He's not been around for the last six months or so, and the kitchen seems to be getting back up to speed. On a good day it probably deserves to be considered among the top half-dozen meatless places in England -- it's certainly on par with the celeb-favoured Gate down the road, despite being half the price.

The menu makes a nod at seasonality (ie. summer and winter), strays randomly between Asia, America and Med, and is fairly ambitious in a California/posh party canape kind of way. I'd recommend aiming for the European options on the menu: haloumi skewers, baked polenta, mushroom wellington, that kind of thing. Starters and desserts are always <£5, mains are <£10. As is usually the way with veggie places, the desserts are there to counterbalance any healthy aspirations found elsewhere on the menu. Expect chocolate plus cream plus sugar plus booze.

This is one of the few places it's worth asking the staff what they recommend. Everything's pretty much the same price, there's no automatic service charge on the bill, and the waiting staff all seem to be pretty enthusiastic about the place. Note: no credit cards, cash only.

Neither the room nor the location will be winning any awards. Crammed-together tables with paper tablecloths and crayons to keep you amused, African tourist tat on the walls, spotlights rescued from a TV studio, and a tempremental old tape player crunching out Cafe Del Mar. Try to get a table upstairs: the basement is very gloomy, and you risk getting caught beside a BBC office party. Also, Goldhawk Road itself is extremely shabby: if you need a drink before or after, try the Bush Bar (opposite side of the road) for overpriced cocktails, or the Goldhawk (just to the left) for a decent beer in the area's least offensive pub. Don't stray into the first bar you see, unless you intend to get into a heated conversation about the merits of Catholicism, or wish to buy a DVD of Big Momma's House 2 from a man with a bin liner.

Finally: the best thing about Blah, and why it's my favoured local, is that it's BYO only with a very decent corkage of about £1.50 per person. It means you can get a top grade bottle of plonk and three courses of properly made food, and still have change from £25 a head. That's a rarity in London, sadly.

Edited March 15, 2006 by naebody (log)

[wgallois]

Great review Naebody. I live just down the road from Blah, Blah, Blah and had always been uncertain of going, but will definitely now give it a go.