"Sakonis offers Indian vegetarian food with some Indo Chinese options and is located on Ealing Road, now for quite some time a predominantly Gujarati area of London, with its menu largely reflecting its local customer base. The restaurant is relatively large and this was our second visit in as many months. Last month we were able to walk in and dine without a reservation but this time we had a reservation for the six of us, which was a wise decision because there were queues at times that we observed. While the buffet seemed extremely popular (especially for the soft ice cream! and our server encouraged us to avail of the buffet, not unsurprisingly, we opted for a la carte a decision that we did not regret. The Sakonis website is very modern and loads quickly, offering modern and well taken photographs of some of the dishes. The mogo chips were one of the starters that we ordered and were well made, a little crispy around the edges, soft in the middle, with a spicy sauce that was right at the cusp. We also ordered the palak paneer and the paneer butter masala, both of which were excellent. Of the two I would say that the latter was a little more flavoursome a surprise since I love spinach perhaps the palak paneer could have been a little more spicy. But the star of the show was surely the bathuras that came with those particular large plates (options also included naan and puri . In fact they were so popular with our group that we ordered an additional four and although they took rather long to arrive, when we compared our fresh, hot bathuras that lingered on the buffet table getting cold, we were sure that we had made the right decision. We also ordered a hakka noodles but that was rather insipid both in look and taste although we could see plenty of diners ordering the Indo Chinese dishes. The masala tea was just alright not nearly as good as Dishoom's for example, but the inclusion of a Parle G biscuit is a cute touch. Service was great even if the late order of bathuras was rather slow. Ria was particularly helpful. We plan to visit again in the summer."
