We had just been to see "Up in the Air" (good film) at the fairly dilapidated Cineworld Fulham Rd and instead of the obvious meal at "Sophie's" or "Tampopo" we headed back up to Bayswater for a curry at "Noorjahan 2" . It's at the site of the old "San Marino" restaurant on Sussex Place. My parents used to go courting there in the 70's, it was all flamboyant waiters and giant pepper mills, great stuff! Anyway it moved on to be replaced eventually by "Noorjahan 2" which has been open for a while now and has steadily been getting busier. I think this has been helped by the presence of "Maximini", another italian and the lively Victoria pub. Sussex Place is a nice little eating enclave and a lot of tourists wander down from Paddington.
We pitched up about 9 and though the restaurant was busy they found us a comfy table and even brought a pillow so my lovely heavily pregnant wife was more comfortable. We had a couple of poppadums to start accompagnied by a nice pickle tray. To follow I odered a the Noorjahan chicken special. My wife had the chicken tikka. We ordered some extra rice and a peshwari nan. The food was really tasty. My dish was cubes of tender chicken that had been skewered marinated and grilled then finished off in a lovely creamy sauce. It had a good blast of heat at the end that didn't interfere with the taste of the sauce or chicken. Lovely stuff.
My wife's curry was very nice, lots of chicken but also lovely veg in the sauce. It tasted great especially when combined with the great peshwari nan. We washed this down with some mineral water and I had a big Cobra beer. We weren't going to have a desert as we were full after such a feast but then my wife spotted they did Ghulab Jamun. They are small fried doughnuts, served in syrup and flavoured with cardamon or pistachio. They were extremely good indeed and took her right back to being a child when she first sampled them at a neighbour of her grandparents in Barnet. I tried one and they were lovely, light but packed full of taste. I had a pretty credible mango kulfi for myself.
It was a really nice meal probably more traditional than our usual haunt "Malabar" but still very good. The service was brisk and friendly though they didn't do a fully itemised bill and they tried to do the chinatown trick of getting you to pay twice the service charge. However the bill was very reasonable for standard of food we had. We will definetly go back as there seemed to be some over nice dishes to try. I'm glad they were so busy on a Sunday night it's a good addition to the area and I'm sorry I haven't been before.
Monday, March 01, 2010
Overall rating
Food 8 | Service 7 | Atmosphere 8 | Value for money 8
definitely better than the original Noorjahan as you will see.