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The India Gate

The India Gate

47 London Rd London, SE23 3TY, SE23 3HF, Forest Heath, United Kingdom

Indian • Coffee • Nepalese • Himalayan


"I'm currently studying for masters disertation and came in here on a quiet Tuesday morning to have breakfast and work. I'd come here before a few weeks ago when the manager was in. He was lovely and let me stay for 4+ hours even though I only ordered a coffee and I'd been raving about how lovely this place was for the past few weeks. This morning I went and arrived at 11:30 and asked to sit in and was told that I could only sit on the bar I pointed to an empty table and the waiter grudgingly allowed me to sit. I was sitting next to two other people on their laptops neither of whom had ordered food. I ordered pancakes and a coffee (asked for no banana on my pancakes) and bottle water, the coffee never came and pancakes had banana on but I left it because the staff seemed stressed. After only an hour and half I was asked to aggressively leave because the cafe has a 2 hour limit. Despite the fact that the person next to me who hadn't ordered food was not moved a long and there was no queue of people waiting. Little did the know I was about to order lunch so they missed out on my service. If you're the lovely manger reading this then I would talk to your staff about the tone they are taking with customers. I understand a 2 hour laptop rule but I was only there for an hour and a half compared to people next to me and I felt like I was picked on. because I was a younger woman working in the cefe covered to the middle aged people sitting next to me."

Sakonis

Sakonis

127 - 129 Ealing Road Wembley London, HA0 4BP, United Kingdom

Kebab • Indian • Seafood • Chinese


"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."