After getting back from the big trip from Amsterdam, I caught up with Brett who was visiting from Australia for an internal work conference. We decided to head out to Brick Lane for a curry, just a little bit of that insight into the famous “curry lane” of London. We ended up at Dawaat because it was the first we stumbled across that looked seemingly alright, but turned out to be extremely disappointing.
According to its website, six brothers run the restaurant and I’m sure we probably met most of them that night. The curries are cheap and with a 20% discount offered, so I thought it was going to be a bit of a bargain night but ended up a very unsatisfying night.
It first started with poor quality poppadums served with even lower quality chutneys and sauces. Our waiter continually pushed us to order more food than we really wanted to eat throughout the night, saying we should get starters, side dishes and dessert and kept at it even when we made it clear we only wanted exactly what we ordered. Admittedly the waiter was correct about ordering two rices as well as a naan since the serves were so small and way overpriced at £2 each.
When the curries arrived they looked pretty dismal and tasted even worse. They had served my Rogon chicken dish with about two times the amount of onion than chicken, and the Korma chicken Brett had ordered was quite watery with no kick to it. They both had insubstantial amounts of meat and its sad to say but the naan bread was probably the best thing we had and it’s generally hard to get that wrong.
The evening continued to turn even more sour when we asked for the bill (several times), taking about half and hour to arrive. The waiters had even gone as far to miss the 20% discount that one brother had first offered, with a quick correction when pointed out but a noticeably lacking apology. I finally paid by credit card and it was even more difficult with the waiter standing over trying to get me to put more service.
You may think that this was a bad experience for us, but from what I observed that night, there was definitely a consistent theme there. One waiter continually insisted a particular table to leave as quickly as possible, apparently because there was a booking, and they were understandably angry because they hadn’t been told about it when they first arrived. It had escalated to a point where I heard the diners vehemently say “we will *LEAVE* when your *BOOKING* finally arrives”. One final example I saw was when another couple were shifted half-way through their meal so that the waiters could more easily accommodate a larger group of five.
Details: Dawaat
Found On: 60 – 62 Bricklane, London E1 6RF
Contactable On: 0207 375 3095
Highlights: Naan bread was alright
Room for improvement: Avoid the experience at all costs – it’s not worth your time here when there are plenty of other options on the same street. There’s plenty of place for improvement here, but frankly it’s not
The Kua Rating: 1 out of 10
Ask any music aficionado in London and one of the big events for the year will most likely be the Camden Crawl. It’s a yearly event that has been going strong for a number of consecutive years running with numerous venues in Camden effectively hosting an entire music festival for an entire day. Best of all most of the bands tend to be up and coming. The ticket gains you entry into any of the various places, and gives you a double CD sampler containing at least one song from each band, and with the inset playing the double role of map and timetable for the event. Many of the artists consequently make it big with a number of last years performers including The Kooks, Hard-Fi, Maximo Park and The Magic Numbers.
