Both Leah and Pauline are finishing up at work this week so Pauline thought she’d organise a “leaving meal” of sorts. Unfortunately due to work commitments the meal ending up being the relatively small group of Leah, Pauline and I! But that didn’t stop us having a good time. The selected venue of choice was the attractive Pasha, not to be confused with Pacha the club, near South Kensington.

Pasha is situated over two floors with the upper floor dedicated it seemed for the more casual bar/lounge feel and the downstairs for the restaurant. I ran a bit late tonight but I was happy to see that the restaurant was more than happy to accommodate our needs – even, as it turns out, reserving a nice intimate table for us in a private alcove at the rear of the restaurant. We started off with some drinks upstairs. The drinks menu, for both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, is rather extensive with a matching price to go with it. The girls were in an exuberant mood and ended up with three cocktails each for the night and though they were extremely delicious they didn’t seem to affected by the alcohol in the drink. I would hope that it was more the fact that the alcohol content wasn’t high rather than them being used to drinking that much. Ha ha. So the conclusion on the drinks is that they were very delicious, but expensive and not too strong.

The food contains the typical offerings for a Moroccan restaurant including a very large selection of cold and hot mezze (with options such as hommus, tabouleh, pastries, chicken wings, falafels, fritters etc.) and a fairly straight-forward mains menu which was dominated by dishes from the grill plus one tagine, one cous cous and a few other main type dishes. I guess the focus on this style of eating is on the sharing so you would expect that the focus is on the mezze. We opted to share three mezze and have a main each. In all honesty I was full before we even got to our mains. We opted for hommus, Lahambil Harissa Doloo (smoked beef ribs) and Garaa Bil Jibneh (Courgette & cheese fritters with mint yogurt dip.) All three dishes were delicious but a special shout out for the smoked ribs. Tender, smoky, tasty – it was perfect. Both Leigh and Pauline went for a mixed grill for their main and I went for something similar except mine was served on a bed of cous cous with some vegetable broth. I really liked my dish but it was so gigantic we three could have had it to share between the three of us.

The service tonight was very friendly and efficient and we must have been served by at least five different people. The head waiter or maybe manager for the evening even checked in with us a couple of times to make sure we were doing okay which was a nice touch. We were also entertained by the, not one, not two, not three, but FOUR belly dancers! When they came on (some time after 9pm) you couldn’t really miss it because the music was blaringly loud and they danced for what felt like at least half an hour. Most tables got their own individual dance from at least two of the girls. It felt even more personal for us because we were trapped … um, I mean, situated in the alcove. They were very good dancers and we were very impressed by their skills.

We totally enjoyed our night at Pasha which was obvious as we were surprised at how late it was when we finally left the restaurant. My only gripe, as I always gripe about these style of restaurant, is the £2.00 cover charge added to the bill for bread, olives and pickled vegetables. In addition to the 15% discretionary service charge these are the kind of small costs that add up to present you with a big bill at the end. Not that I’m saying the bread we received was not worth the £2.00 but I’d like to have the option to refuse it if we wanted to.