Suruchi - Islington

I have been dining at this restaurant almost every week for several years. I love their food and the fact that I can bring my own wine. However, they have recently relocated about 450m away to a new location where you can still enjoy their delicious dishes. You can find their new address online or look for a large notice on the window at their old location with directions to the new spot, which is about a 12 to 15 minute walk away.

I enjoy a good old-fashioned curry restaurant. This place appeared to fit the bill, but it was a disappointing experience. The poppadoms were not crisp and were replaced by the waiter with even softer ones. The chapati was hard, and the meat was tough. Even the simplest dishes were prepared incorrectly.

First off, I want to inform you that the restaurant has relocated about 400m to the south. Everything has been transferred to the new address. The menu remains the same, as well as the special deal on Tuesday evenings where you can bring your own wine. They have also installed an AC unit in the ceiling. Make sure to come and check it out.

I’ll give this is 3+ rating in other words 3.5 if it were possible to do that scoring on the review system. This is a reasonable quality, local Indian restaurant of the type which used to be ten a penny in London but now are far rarer. We ate on a hot hot summer’s evening. The restaurant had a lick of paint during the lockdown. The staff (culturally from southern India, I believe) were keen and helpful for our group of six. There is a fairly large range of standard restaurant Indian dishes such as biryani, mixed grills, aloos, dals, etc. Due to the southern Indian Hindi influence you’ll be pleased to know that vegetarian dishes feature strongly that this restaurant, if you don’t want to eat meat. I shared a mixed grill and a special biryani. The quality was reasonably good well presented with as far as I could tell good quality ingredients. Recommended and certainly good value for money. It doesn’t launch any rockets in terms of haute cuisine but it certainly fills a particular niche very well.

We used to live locally were regulars in there when it first opened in the late 1980's. We decided to go back there this week as they were well known for their vegetarian food. The logo menu are the same the interior hasn't changed much, although it didn't look like you could now dine al fresco. The exterior should have warned us that all was not as it used to be with gaudy posters with offers over the windows an A board outside. The Paper Dosa main course was virtually inedible, the wrap should be crispy, this was rubbery, the filling was over spiced it was tepid when it arrived. As the starter had been non-descript a customer was talking so loudly my husband I couldn't hear each other speak, we decided to pay the bill leave. What should have been a pleasant trip down Memory Lane turned into a disaster sadly we won't be returning.