Oh dear... If I could minus stars for food I would here.
Being Anglo-Indian, I'm from a British Indian family, this restaurant sells this as its cuisine speciality, it's niche, it's my comfort food.
Having eaten here just after it opened, when they served an excellent onion bahji but could not follow it up, I thought it fair to try again.
The onion bahji was still excellent and our other starter was a lamb sheek kebab. This was dry and not very interesting. It was also served on a sizzling plate as expected, but the plate was sizzling with cabbage!?!?... That's sizzling fried cabbage. Really? I've never seen this, it should be onion, that's a part of its flavouring!
Anyway we let that pass.
Our mains were a beef vindaloo and a 'chefs special' of lamb cutlets, served with pilau rice and cheese and onion nan.
The vindaloo, nan and rice landed... It all looked fine, but we had to wait and wait for the lamb, which eventually arrived.
I looked at it rather quizzically. It looked awful, grey, bitty and again served on sizzling cabbage!
The vindaloo was fine, if containing very, very little meat, the nan and the rice, ok, nothing wow or amazing, but it's unfair to always expect that, but the lamb was truly one of the worst dishes I have ever had the displeasure of sharing a table with.
It was overcooked, dry and flavourless and looked disgusting.
I examined it further. It looked like lamb cooked three ways.
There were 5 cutlets, well one was a bone with no meat. One was bbq'd to cinders, one looked as though it had been deep fried and the other three tasted tough and grey. No flavour was noticeable. Yuck!
I asked the staff about the lamb and particularly about the sizzling cabbage.
They said this was how they do it. I asked why no onions, they said because they produce too much water!?... Seriously? If you can't cook onions can you really be in a kitchen?
To be fair they agreed cabbage wasn't the traditional base for the 'sizzling' dish (see photos posted by others of sizzling onions!) and offered to replace the lamb dish, which remember, we'd already waited for. We declined as it just felt like we wanted to end this meal as soon as we could.
I guess this reminded me that you need to trust your gut instinct.
When I was placing the order the waiter didn't know what a vindaloo was... I asked if he knew his menu, he said he was new. Fair enough, but it is an Indian restaurant... It was a vindaloo...
Please guys up your game...
There is a gap in the market in Sydney for good Indian dining, as witnessed up the street by the Malabar, which was booked out.
Currently this place is nowhere near good enough to be in this market.
Indeed if the Malabar is full, sadly the North Indian Diner on Oxford street is a significantly better bet than The Colonial... and about a third of the price.
I've now tried this place twice... Never again read more