Nargile Lounge — Restaurant in Marsascala

This restaurant claims to be “offering an authentic Indian and Arabic cuisine” according to their website. The food is far from authentic Indian and is definitely a far cry from the “offerings” in the UK.

Service was okay apart from the fact that I got a beef “madras” when I asked for chicken. But they did deal with that complaint and the complaint about my Peshawari Naan... read on.

As for the food - Onion bhaji’s were a ring of whole sliced onion covered in a plain batter. Meat samosas ordered came as mash potato and a few veg with a rather hard pie type pastry, rather than filo. Peshawari Naan bread was a naan bread covered in sweet tandoori red spread and covered with fruit salad (grapes, kiwi fruit and apple) drizzled with desicated coconut. My wife and sons “curry’s” were actually diced and flavoured skewered chicken kebabs with no sauce. My chicken madras (first of all came as beef) had a sauce, but the tomato sauce was hardly spicy and had desicated coconut in it as well. The pilau rice was actually as we would have expected it. Wine and drinks were okay.

When I told them that I was not paying for the naan bread as it was clearly not authentic, they came back at the end of our meal with a proper Peshawari naan bread and told us that they could do it but that was not what their regular customers wanted. I sent that back as well as we had already finished our meals.

€70 in total for a totally ruined night and a terrible eating experience.

They didn’t charge me for the naan bread. No apology or consession for the fact that they were fully aware we had not enjoyed the meal.

In the end the management tried to tell us “this food is cooked for Maltese tastes” and that may be true, but don’t claim authenticity if it is actually styled for Maltese tastes. Hands down the worst “curry” I or my family...

What can I say... Being from Pakistan eating Indian in western countries have always been disappointing.. As its not authentic lacks flavours. But everyone kept raving about nargile so I deicide to go. Well it was disappointing. Dry tasteless tandoori and paratha was a joke.. Throwing some oil on a chapati doesn't make it paratha. The proton was small as seen from photo and no chutneys as mentioned on the menu that would help swallowing. We also had biryani (not in photo) which wasn't bad but still not that good. But I guess what was also disappointing was the service when I asked for chicken leg tandoori the first thing the waiter said "it takes 50 mins to cook, so it's a long time without a starter" maybe he was being polite but it felt like he was pushing for us to buy starters. And the whole place was filled with wines and drinks menu didn't have any other options.. Well we didn't want wine. And really had to ask the waiter what other options were there "other drinks and soft drinks" like dude tell us exactly what you have. 🙄 I understand selling a €5 wine for 15 is something you want to do but should be clearer about other options. You won't be seeing me...

Unfortunately it did not live up to the reviews on Google maps. Food is good however not the best indian I've had. We had spicy chicken wings and paneer pakora for starter. The wings were not that spicy whilst the paneer pakora was good. For mains we had lamb tandoori and chicken tikka masala. The lamb meat was not of the best quality with some hard to chew pieces. The chicken Tikka masala was good however we were not asked the level of hotness desired and it was quite mild. We also had gheera rice and naan bread. The naan bread was crunchy, and seemed to have been cooked in a hurry. As dessert we had the gulab jamun which was good. On the whole was not impressed with the food when compared to other restaurants, it was just good but not something I would be looking forward to again. In addition to this service is quite slow and for some reason we were charged 3 euro more than the price listed for the wine. Did not live up to the good reviews and will be looking for something...