Historical version 1 of Masaledar, SW17 7TJ (view current version)
- 020 8767 7676
- 121 Upper Tooting Road
Indian restaurant in Tooting, between Tooting Bec and Tooting Broadway stations.
secretlondon and Zair went here one weekday evening as part of my attempt to eat everywhere (interesting) in Tooting. The ground floor has a visible kitchen and a small number of tables. The decor is pretty gaudy with a colour changing waterfall (photo) and a wall of gold glitter (photo).
The menu is noticeably expensive for Tooting with mains between £8 and £9. Although the menu has chillis, representing hotness, next to most menu items we felt the ones we tried were very mild. The menu gives one chilli as subtly spiced, two as spiced and three as hot. This is misleading as you might think this was heat rather than flavouring. We thought even spicy things were really mild.
We had mogo (cassava chips) for £4.25 (photo) and bajia (onion bahjis) for £4.50 (photo). My mogo was supposed to come with tamarind chutney but just came with a plate of popodom style sauces. These were not fluorescent green thankfully but still not tamarind.
Our mains were Haleem (£9.95) (photo) which I liked but was mildly spiced and saag murgh (£8.25) (photo). Pilaw rice was £3.75 and a paratha was £3.50.
The toilets are upstairs. The ladies was full of small flies (like fruit flies) and did not have a working hand dryer. I am told the gents was also full of flies.
There was a weird smell near where we were sitting. We're not sure what it was, but together with the flies makes us wonder about their food hygiene. When I got home I looked up their food hygiene to find it was missing. Google's cache gives a score of 1, but it seems to have been removed from the actual websites.
Overall: I wasn't impressed and won't be coming back. It's over priced and below quality for the area. It's BYOB with a corkage of £1.
Accessibility: There are some tables on the ground floor but most tables, and I think all the toilets, are upstairs. The stairs have no handrail.
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Last visited by secretlondon, May 2016.