Places like this give me hope for my hometown, and I spent much of the meal in disbelief that we were still in Walsall! The cavernous stone interior and white tablecloths wouldn't have been out of place in a much more prestigious location.
We were a large group and seated on the mezzanine, which judging from the even larger group up there is reserved for the bigger (/rowdier?!) parties. With 16 of us they suggested the group set menu would be easiest, and given I'm a fan of variety and the selection of dishes sounded pretty good, I agreed.
The food is where they nail it, which is perhaps most important. I've tried their catering at events and parties before, so their reputation preceeded them. It all tastes of good quality ingredients, nicely flavoured, and with a good selection of accompaniments. Veg Manchurian is the starter not to be missed, whilst the award-winning saag lives up to the hype (ask them to tell you the story behind it).
The service is polite and well-mannered, and were happy to bring out a birthday cake for us (albeit on a massive silver plinth from the kitchen that was bigger than the cake!). However I did feel like they were pushing the upselling a fair bit - as bday girl everyone let me take charge of the wine, which the waiters seemed extremely quick to pour out and kept asking if I wanted the next 2 bottles at a time. They also suggested extras throughout the meal, such as coming to ask me if I wanted welcome cocktails for everyone at the start, or later a bottle of (v pricey) champers for the table when my cake arrived. If you manage to keep politely declining these as I did, then you should end up with a very reasonably priced meal - the group menu in particular was very good value and we didn't even manage to finish everything.
They're certainly going for an upmarket, classy feel here, which I should mention was slightly blighted by the group of ten guys at the table opposite doing a waterfall of jaegerbombs towards the end of the meal. I *think* my mum was joking when she suggested we do the same...
Keep the standards up guys, and ease off the hard-sell a little - your food speaks for itself! I'll defo be back :) read more