Let me be straight with you guys - when it comes to Iranian food I'm the worse critic as I'm always comparing it to the amazingly delicious food that my mom makes. And to be honest, this place comes short. The other day in London, I was starving, in the mood for Iranian food and too lazy to be bothered to walk the 1 mile to get food from my all time favourite, Alounak on Westbourne Grove. Since Alounak doesn't bring out, I took a look at just-eat and yelp and decided to go for this place. Too hungry to reeeeally read the reviews, I decided to trust the somewhat high rating and order a huge stack of food.
To make a long story short, the food is shabby and poorly made. I later learned that most of the high raters are non-Iranian while the few Iranians who tried out the food are as sceptical me. Iranian food applies quite simple ingredients so it's mostly about timing and technique, something that this place unfortunately lacks.
To be concrete, here is what I ordered:
- Salad olevije - a mayo based salad to eat with Iranian in a baguette or Iranian flatbread. This was my all time favourite as a kid and a most at any birthday gathering. It resembles an Italian salad with shredded chicken and pickled gherkins, however, this one was just bland, very greasy and de voided of taste - not recommendable.
- Ashe reshte, an Iranian soup with lentils, herbs, and wheat noodles. This was OK, however, they'd forgotten to include the most important part, roasted dry mint in olive oil and a sour diary mixture on top - called kashk - so the soup experience was a bit off.
- Sabzi paneer - Iranian herbs with radish, feta and flat bread was OK, but compared to Alounak not the best ingredients.
- Maste musir was actually good, then again, it's really difficult to ruin this one. It's basically fat and thick Greek yogurt mixed with pickled garlic - delicious and simple.
- Shish kebab chicken is a dish where I feel that Iranians excel by demonstrating just how delicious a grilled chicken can be. Usually, the saffron marinated chicken is moist, juicy and full of flavour. This one was everything but, a bland, disappointing and boring dish.
- the naan was OK - but it wasn't Iranian. It was more compact in texture and lacked the ability to suck up the juices from the grilled chicken. Again, go to Alounak for the real deal.
- Faloodeh was the final dish - and let's faced it - the worst I've ever had. To begin with, the lemon juice was frozen and concrete hard. Once it was fluid and edible, it was by far one of the most bland and tasteless faloodeh I've had the misfortune of trying.
With other great options in London (did I mention Alounak? ) you're better off not spending your hard earned quids somewhere else. read more