Tea_eagle’s Blog

Moti Mahal, Great Queen Street, London WC2

Score: 9/10

0.5 deducted for one glitch in otherwise terrific service, and 0.5 deducted for a slightly odd lemon citrus aroma, smells a bit like they have an air freshener plugged in. But these are minor, minor things, this is a great restaurant.

Moti Mahal is a modern, upmarket restaurant. Coats are taken when you arrive and stowed in cupboards. Tables have linen table cloths and napkins. Loos are spotless, spacious and have Molton Brown soap and moisturiser. Music is chilled easy jazz and dance type  stuff, but not too loud. And there are lots of staff. The food is based on fresh quality ingredients. And although the à la carte menu is expensive, the lunch time and pre/post-theatre menus are really good value. And the pre-theatre offers  a veggie menu as well as a non-veggie one.

We arrived, swapped our coats for a token and were seated. A waiter arrived with the non-veggie menu – but brought over a veggie one whan we asked. The pre-theatre deal includes a free glass of prosecco which we didn’t want – we asked if we could have a soft instead and were initially only offered fizzy drinks. The waiter did return after a moment to say that we could have fruit juice instead, so we had one orange juice and one mango juice.

The food includes a salad platter, which is a chopping board stocked with whole tomatoes, a cucumber, radishes, a red onion and leaves with a house spice mix and lemon. You can then chop and mix your own salad. All very fresh with lots of flavour, particularly the tomatoes. The first course was roated broccoli with cheese and raita, the brocollo was crunchy and tasty and the raita was cool and minty. Then the mains, which were a veggie korma and a spinach and mushroom saag kumb served with bombay aloo and naan. These were full of spice and taste and all were delicious. Definitely needed the raita! The naan was fluffy and fresh and warm, served in a paper packet to keep the warm and steam in.And to finish we rounded off with one mango kulfi and one malai kulfi. Both were delicious, although think the malai was my favourite.

The bill came to £47.25 for the two of us – two cover charges of £1, two set menus at £20 and the service charge.

This is a great restaurant, with great food – really excellent! Will definitely come back, and would definitely strongly recommend. I reckon this is easily the best restaurant in this area of London.