Marble Arch/ Paddington

Sarchnar Grill: Middle Eastern maze

Sarchnar Grill: Middle Eastern maze

In the one mile stretch from Marble Arch to Little Venice, there are almost 30 different Middle Eastern restaurants. How to choose? One crude, but often successful, metric might simply to consider how busy are the venues. As a local, your reviewer was constantly struck by how full the Sarchnar Grill always appeared to be. Not only did it seem impossible to get a table, but often a queue would extend some way outside the restaurant. Good luck did eventually allow me and my dining comrade finally to secure a table on a recent weekday lunchtime. We were impressed but not wowed.

Zayna: Pure Punjabi pleasure

Zayna: Pure Punjabi pleasure

Walk into Zayna and the first thing that hits you is the smell: roasted spice – cumin, cardamom, coriander, black pepper and more. It’s the sort of welcome you want, time and again. The venue opened in 2009 and your reviewer stepped through its doors very soon after. Over the years, he has been back with a fairly high degree of regularity, although a visit earlier this week marked the first time in a while. The good news is that even with a slight revamp to the décor, the quality of the experience remains undiminished.

Gold Mine: Gift that keeps on giving

Gold Mine: Gift that keeps on giving

If it’s authentic Chinese food your after, then Queensway is the place to come. Packed venues and queues snaking down the street speak to the popularity of the location. How to choose though from the plethora of options, many of which look – to the untrained eye – almost identical? In this case, a local’s recommendation paid off. Whether Goldmine is definitively better than some of its neighbours is hard to know, but is was certainly packed with atmosphere and delivered well on the culinary front

Meatliquor Queensway: Dirty dining (June 2017)

Two health warnings at the beginning of this review: first, notwithstanding that I am almost certainly in the wrong demographic fully to appreciate the restaurant, it still wasn’t very good; next, this is in no sense a place to consider going should you care about your health. Nonetheless, Meatliquor clearly is doing something right...

Massis: No reason to go (April 2017)

Let’s be brutal and to the point: if you are in the Paddington area and want to eat Middle Eastern food, just hop on any bus or walk 15 minutes until you hit the Edgware Road, where a broad spectrum of excellent, authentic and well-priced options exists. In other words, don’t go to Massis – an over-priced and disappointing alternative located in the Paddington Basin development, offering a poor imitation of cuisine from the region.

Zayna: Well worth a return visit (February 2017)

My visits to Zayna stretch back over almost ten years and I can think of no occasion when I have been disappointed by this restaurant. It is a small, intimate setting on a side-street near Marble Arch that cooks up some of the most interesting and flavour-intense cuisine from the Indian sub-continent that can be found in London

Kurobuta Marble Arch: On-trend, if not for all (September 2014)

It seems that if you want to attempt to ensure success in opening a London restaurant then there is a fairly simple formula to follow: you hire a chef formerly at a prestigious restaurant (in this case, Nobu); you offer pan-Asian fusion food; you make all the dishes obligatory for sharing; and you staff the place with trendy and good-looking people.

Bombay Palace: Great food, but terrible service (November 2013)

The British love of curry is well known and all manner of options are available, from Michelin-starred grandeur by the likes of Tamarind or Rasoi Vineet Bhatia to your carpeted local Indian found in almost every small town in England that serves After Eight mints at the meal’s conclusion.