Noor Jahan

Kimberlee Anderson (27 May 2009)

This time last week, my husband and I were eating at Noor Jahan for the last time. We were in London for ten days on business and stumbled onto the restaurant, unaware of the hype. We had discovered ‘The Duke Of Clarence’ the same evening and decided to eat enroute to our hotel on Cromwell Road. The food and service were absolutely first-class. We ate there twice during our stay and I managed to have the lamb chops each time because they were so delicious. It was a lovely dining experience I will treasure and a cuisine I shall crave for a long time.

John (8 January 2005)

Oh dear. If only this restaurant matched up to the extensive advertising. Alas, it doesn't and my experience makes it one to avoid.

10 p.m, eating alone on a Saturday night is sad , but sometimes necessary. Good service can make a solitary occasion better. However, this is an establishment where the lads (waiters) seem to view custom as an intrusion. Their conversation seemed more important than following basic courtesy of checking whether or not a meal was adequate.

On to the food. Vegetable samosas were little more than mashed potato in pastry, while the poppadoms (plain and stale instead of the massala variety ordered) arrived - a tad controversially - after the starter, and then only when I reminded the dozy waiter that they had not been delivered. Chicken Jalfreizi amounted to four unappetising looking strips of meat in a yoghurt based source that had been crucified by the cook's apparent belief that everything should be swamped with garlic. Jalfreizi should be spicy ... this was insipid and heart-burn inducing. It was accompanied by a similarly bland bindhi barghi and tandoori roti, a bread order necessary because this was the first Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi restaurant I have visited where the humble chappati seemed beyond the capabilities of the chef.

The bottle of sparkling water was first class.

I returned, miserably, to my hotel and advised the staff to make sure no gullible visitors made my mistake of visiting this establishment. 0/10