Restaurant

Name: Salaam Namaste
Area: Bloomsbury
Address: 68 Millman Street
London WC1N 3EF
Phone: 020 7405 3697
Website: www.salaam-namaste.co.uk

Visits to this restaurant ...

1. 29 Apr 2010|2. 24 Nov 2011|3. 29 Aug 2013


'Bush' or 'No Bush'?

Visit Report

Visit Number: 140 (visit 2 of 3 for this restaurant)
Date of visit: 24 Nov 2011
Cost per head: £25.00 (2 beers)

Serv Amb Beer Start Nan Rice Main Veg VFM Score Comments
Overall 4.5 6.8 7.5 6.5 6.1 6.4 7.7 7.1 7.2 6.74
Jon 7 8 7 6 5 7 7 6 6 6.6 See Jon's comments
Brian 4 8 7 7 4 6 8 7 8 6.7 See Brian's comments
John 5 7 7 6 7 6 9 7 9 7.1 See John's comments
Graeme 2 8 7 5 7 7 7 7 5 6.1 See Graeme's comments
Richard 5 7 8 8 7 8 8 8 8 7.5 See Richard's comments
Neil 7 7 7 6 8 3 8 8 8 7.0 See Neil's comments
Dominic 3 7 7 5 5 7 6 6 5.8 See Dominic's comments
Chris (Guest) 3 5 10 6 4 6 6 6 8 6.0 See Chris's comments
Tim 3 4 8 8 8 8 8 8 6 7.0 See Tim's comments
Robin 6 7 7 8 5 8 9 8 8 7.5 See Robin's comments

All Comments

Jon - After such a good performance last year, the Salaam Namaste was a little disappointing this time around.  I went with a popular choice from last time for my starter, a Karathi (sp?) Kebab.  While it was tasty, it certainly lacked any sort of wow factor and was closer to tepid than hot temperature-wise.  I again went with a popular choice for my main, the King Prawn Pathia – while the sauce was hot and tasty, the prawns were lacking in number and still had their tails on.  On complaining to the manager, he did apologise and produced a free example of the dish as it should've been (which was much better), but that's hardly the point!  The keema nan did not have enough meat in it, the special rice was tasty but small in size and the veg was generally good but the sag aloo had the sag/aloo proportions a little too biased towards the sag for my liking.  Good night, though!!

Brian - The mixed starter (Salmon, Chicken and Paneer (cheese) bites) was small but enjoyable, with only one bit of each and some salad.  The main of Murgh Kiri Te Kanawa (probably not the exact name!) was very tasty, comprising a chicken breast stuffed with lamb mince and spinach, in a medium sauce.  A bit too much protein to be fair, as I could not eat everything on my plate, and I was glad only to have had one popadom and a small starter.  The restaurant was pleasant, as was the pub (Rugby Arms), and in a different part of town which made a nice change.  Service was OK, but would probably have been poor if we had not asked them to take our order.  Some may disagree and say it was poor anyway, especially anyone who may have had food dropped on their heads, or the tails left on their prawns, which made it very messy to extract the prawn as they were covered in a thick sauce.  OK, service was poor, I've convinced myself.  And my chapati was very dry. And I would have preferred to have had a choice of rice, although the mushroom rice was reasonable enough.

John - Small KP puree followed by an excellent Chicken Tikka Bhuna. Chick-peas were excellent too. Overall an enjoyable night livened up by a couple of interesting topics of conversation: Dancing (Lulu) and gardening (bushes).

Graeme - Even without my waiter-spills-curry-sauce-on-head incident (more later), this was a disappointing return to my favourite restaurant of last year. The service was so slow, it spoilt the evening. It is actually quite a small place and they seemed to have enough staff but they were disorganised. I think the quality of the food here is generally very good but the dishes that I chose were not great. They have discontinued the Chicken Chat that I enjoyed last visit so I had the Kathi Kabab (chopped lamb & stuff in a chapatti wrap) to start but this was quite dry. For main I had Goan Green Chicken Curry which was well-cooked and tasty but the sauce was too thin for my liking and there wasn't that much chicken. Everything else was fine (sorry, Richard, I mean good!). It was good to see Chris the Dagger again as our guest - as always, he managed to introduce some intellectual topics into the conversation. Oh, yes, and during the serving of our main courses, a waiter reached over me with a dish of curry and spilt some of the sauce over my head. The manager came over very quickly and was very apologetic and gave me a hot towel and asked me if there was anything that I wanted. Stupidly, I only asked for a bottle of Cobra but, because of the incident, we did remove the built-in service charge from the bill which saved us £30-odd between us. Funnily enough, I would like the opportunity to return to Salaam Namaste as I still think it is a good place but I did not have the best experience tonight.

Richard - The menu offered one of the best variety of dishes I have seen, from traditional dishes to Keralan, bhel poori and exotic choices. Unlike some places, you felt they could deliver what was promised from this selection. The starter was tasty (called "canapés" but actually mixed grill) and the Goan sea bass main was in a delicious sauce, although both could have been slightly larger. Sides, rice, poddadums and beer were of good quality, and the location is great. However the service was not the best, as they took ages to take the order, and the food was slow to arrive.

Neil - Excellent quality curry house that doesn't hold back from making the dishes hot. Woke me up from my normally quite mild Rogan Josh. Great value for money especially when you remove the service charge, in this case because of Graeme having his hair washed with curry sauce. Maybe it will help the bald patch. There was also an incident with prawn tails not being removed that surprised a couple of the members. To their credit they did come back with a replacement dish, sans tails, thereby improving an average service mark (took a long time to get the main order in). Hope it stays in the top six although I will avoid the rather dry (and small) special rice next time.

Dominic - After having been to this eatery a number of times "off-piste" I was looking forward to this revisit. However, while the food is largely good to very good, the service was appalling culminating in Graeme getting "up-close-and-personal" with his main ... (back of head, arms etc!). My starter was the mixed tika dish which had small portions and was a tad dry. My main fish dish was quite good with a slightly hot but tasty sauce. The rice and sides were largely OK and the wine was decently priced. But for me, the service made this a disappointing visit with everything slow (taking of order, delivery of dishes) and everything had to be asked for three times. Accordingly, we insisted they deduct the service charge and to be fair, they quickly accommodated. I fear for this eatery falling out of the top 6 which is a shame given our first visit.

Chris - Beer excellent - it's Cobra, how can you mess it up. Main course was quite spicy which was good but lacked any real depth of flavour and the nan was a little too greasy for my liking.

Tim - This is not a large restaurant, and our table for 10 was close to one of the walls, making it awkward for some people to get in and out. Our popadoms arrived with generous portions of accompaniments, including an unusual but tasty red-coloured one. Starter of lamb sula tikka was good, as was the main (when it finally arrived) of murgh ki shagorana (chicken stuffed with lamb). The accompanying mushroom rice was also above average, and I enjoyed the niramish (mixed veg with coconut and spices) and other vegetable dishes. So the food was good, but the overall experience was let down by poor service – it was slow (not just for the food, but drinks as well) and there were other problems, e.g. one of the wines I chose was unavailable, and instead of asking me to choose another, they simply brought a different wine without saying anything; and food was split over one of the party. For the price we paid, the overall VFM was good, but that included a TopTable discount of 30% off food, and the deduction of the service charge.

Robin - Not quite as good as last time. It took a long time for our starters to turn up, but thereafter the service was ok. I stuck to the same dishes as before: the Kathi Kebab was very good and the King Prawn Pathia was also good - but this time contained 3 very large prawns (with their tails on - very messy) instead of lots of medium-sized prawns - not quite as good as before. Jon had the same and complained to the boss, who agreed - and later turned up with another plateful prepared properly, which Jon and I consumed. The Keema Nan was disappointing, one half being completely devoid of any meat, the special rice was very nice and the veg dishes were all good. But overall I didn't enjoy my meal quite as much as on the previous visit - a shame, but it was still well above average. VFM, as before, much helped by the 30% Top Table discount.


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