Kings Cross Tandoori, Grays Inn Road

Verdict Food: 6/10 Service: 7/10 Solo dinner ambience: 6/10

Hors d'oeuvres: Poppadoms

• Crunchy rather than just crispy. Seeming thicker than the usual ones
• Lime pickle - OK
• Mango chutney - fine, if a bit sweet
• Yoghurt thing - why oh why do curry houses insist on putting turmeric/saffron in the mint stuff? Temple has it right - a bit of mint is all you need
• Onion thing - appeared to contain cucumber, did not investigate as I fucking hate cucumber.

Starter: "Mixed Starter"

• Chicken/lamb tikka - well cooked but almost no spice flavour
• Sheekh kebab - dry, crumbly, fairly tasteless
• Onion bhaji - nice nutty flavour, almost a bit like falafel, but it fell apart upon contact and I was left hoovering up bits of overcooked onion from my plate
• Sizzler dish had far too much oil on it so the onions underneath all this were almost deep-fried rather than just softened and a bit burnt as is proper
• Garnish - generous wedge of lemon (no squeezy device though), wedge of tomato, bit of shredded lettuce

Main course: Lamb don't-remember-the-name (hot, sweet, sour with tamarind), pilau rice

• Alarming deep red, almost purple colour, like raw seekh kebab with too much food colouring
• Fair amount of oil floating on it
• Lamb not quite cooked to tenderness
• Sauce slightly sickly. Seems to have absorbed too much fat/oil.
• Sweet enough but not sour or hot enough
• Rice properly cooked, suitably fragrant, but a bit oily

Beverages Hard to go wrong with Perrier so I had no complaints, but they had just run out of Cobra and Kingfisher which left a lot of other unhappy customers drinking the abominable Bangla.