Moiduls Rawalpindi

Moiduls Rawalpindi

This was the first time that the reviewers had re-visited a restaurant which was subject to an earlier review. One reason related to the fact that the review was based on the views of  only two of us following a lunchtime visit and we felt that notwithstanding the good impression and the resulting positive review, it was necessary to try it out again in the evening. A secondary issue was that we could not agree on which of the two, as yet, un-reviewed restaurants should be tackled next – we all viewed that prospect with unrestrained horror!!

Moiduls was kitted out with posters on the walls announcing the recent award , quoting: “West London’s ‘curry master’ Moidul Hussain scooped Best South Asian Restaurant (London suburbs) at the prestigious 2012 Asian Curry Awards held last month.  His eponymous restaurant, Moidul’s in Teddington, took the prized top award, while the Twickenham branch, Moidul’s Rawalpindi, was highly commended.”  Our overall impression was that the restaurant lived up to this accolade. There was a number of other diners who were there before us – attesting the relative popularity of the restaurant on a cold night in the depths of January. This is in stark contrast to the sorry sight of many of our Indian restaurants in mid-week in a Twickenham under pressure from the recession. This meant that our food took longer than in many other establishments, which to us means that it is cooked freshly and is in line with our earlier lunchtime visit.

 

Our poppadams arrived, accompanied by a variety of pickles in addition to the usual onion chutney and the various other coconut, tamarind and yoghourt concoctions – an interesting and impressive array of condiments.

Our order was both adventurous and focused on firm favourites: lamb chop biriany (!) certainly new to us; Haas Tikka, described on the menu as ‘marinated duck fillets lightly spiced and cooked in the clay oven’,  making a pleasant change from the usual chicken; king prawn dansak and chicken dansak ; balti chicken tikka jalfrezi. Vegetable accompaniments were spinach, cauliflower bhaji, tarka dall, bindi and brinjal mixed, again new to us, kobi aloo. Interestingly they provided pilaw rice with the dansak dishes and were happy to replace the rice with roti for one of us. Overall, the quality of food was first rate and was surely freshly cooked. No complaints here on portions and quality.

Beer is our staple when eating curry and they have three types of Indian beers – Bangla (again new to us) draught Kingfisher and Cobra. The bottled beers were expensive in our view at £4.95 but the draught at £3.95 is not unreasonable. Overall, prices we thought were toppish but the service and ambience, including the ethnic music were good and far above the average quality. The waiters worked hard and were pleasant and deserved their tip despite the overall level prices.

Our scoring was as follows:

Price:              7

Service:          7.75

Quality:          8.5

Ambience:     7.5

Total:              30.75

23rd January 2013