Picture of Moti Mahal, WC2B 5AA

Historical version 1 of Moti Mahal, WC2B 5AA (view current version)

Modern Indian restaurant in Covent Garden/Holborn.

Kake, Bob, DrHyde, etc visited on a Wednesday evening in May 2008. We'd booked, and this was a good thing, as the place seemed fairly busy.

We started with a round of cocktails at £8 apiece (see menu); Kake rather liked her Tamarind Martini, which had just enough spice to be warming.

After ordering, we got a little freebie amuse-bouche along with a shooter of strawberry lassi photo, and we also got a palate cleanser of red wine and pear sorbet in between starters and mains.

Kake started with seared scallops (£14) photo; tasty enough. Main course was pan-fried baby mullet (£15.50) photo; again quite tasty, but unfortunately rather oversalted; although it started out fine, by the time I was halfway through I was really noticing the excess of salt (and I like salty food). I did mention this to the staff, but another member of our party had a stronger complaint so I decided not to press the issue.

We got some side dishes to share - we started to order these individually but our waiter suggested that we let him bring an appropriate quantity of side dishes in order to avoid ending up with too much; this turned out to work fairly well. Kake was quite keen on the dal makhani (black lentils in cream; £4).

We ended up paying about £60/head, though we did drink quite a lot of booze.

Kake's verdict: I'd like to come back and give this place another go. As of May 2008, they also do a lunch special of two courses for £10 (see menu), which seems like a good way to try it out.

See also:

Last visited by Kake, Bob, DrHyde, etc, 14 May 2008. Opening hours taken from the Moti Mahal website, May 2008.
OS X co-ord: 530419 OS Y co-ord: 181256 (Latitude: 51.514672 Longitude: -0.120249)
This is version 1 (as of 2008-05-15 22:13:45). View current version.