Mowgli Street Food Cardiff — Restaurant in Castle

I took my son to Mowgli’s with my daughters to celebrate his 21st birthday. I had never visited a Mowgli’s before but had read some great reviews. Unfortunately, to say I was underwhelmed and disappointed is a vast understatement. The size of the dishes is ludicrously mean and miserly; I simply don’t buy the explanation of the staff that they are “like tapas” given the extortionate prices.

My daughters and I ordered the street sharer meals. Naively, I believed the promise on the menu that we would receive a good selection of dishes and that this was “pot luck” on the day, determined by what the chef was cooking. It was in fact highly apparent that the chief ingredients of many of the dishes were as cheap as chips: potatoes, chickpeas and lentils. The dahl was mushy and dull. Each portion of rice amounted to no more than about three spoonfuls. The rotis were tiny, tasteless and dry; I could make better at home with supermarket chapati flour. Our ice-cream desserts literally consisted of one spoonful of ice-cream each. I couldn’t help but feel utterly conned and swindled.

The concept of Mowgli’s appears to be based upon the objective of greedily making as much profit as possible by spicing up the cheapest of ingredients and serving the most meagre of portion sizes. The ambient atmosphere is simply created by an abundance of fairy lights and ropes ridiculously hanging from above. Even the serviettes are disposable - no better quality than those you would get in a roadside burger van. If I was the owner, I would feel deeply ashamed.

In short, the food is crazily overpriced and overhyped. The decor is silly and childish. In addition, you are automatically charged a service charge on top of the inflated bill, as well as a “voluntary” donation to charity. I am sure the owner must realise that most people would be too embarrassed to ask for these to be removed. Well, I’m not. I asked for them to be removed on principle and left a tip of my own choosing. I refuse to be compelled to pay a tip of over £13 when the food and portion sizes are so unimpressive.

One pound to charity does not sound a lot, but I checked out the Mowgli charity accounts and found that they lacked the detail, transparency and clarity I would expect to characterise such accounts; for instance, what exactly does all the expenditure relate to? Very little non-numerical information is provided. One thing about the accounts is, however, clear: taking £1 from every single customer who doesn’t object adds up to hundreds of thousands of pounds per year.

There’s a traditional Christian principle that you shouldn’t seek to make excessive profit from people but instead treat them with fairness, honesty and decency. Not at all in evidence at Mowgli’s,...

The food and the service were very good, but our meal was spoilt by a corporate event taking place in the same room as the rest of the early evening diners.

We went for an early evening pre theatre supper. The tables towards the rear of the restaurant were occupied by a party of about 20-25 who were holding some sort of corporate award ceremony. Initially they were having a smoking break outside the restaurant, but by the time we had ordered they were back inside when the speeches started. So whilst we were eating our food we had to listen to the managers give motivational speeches and hand out a string of awards. The managers also told their staff that if they won an award, they either had to give an acceptance speech or neck their drink. This meant that not only did we have to listen to a bunch of mumbled acceptance speeches but there was also a huge amount of cheering for each award and even more when people were downing their drinks.

The noise was so loud that for large parts of the evening we were unable to talk to each other.

The food itself was excellent. We had sticky chicken (£8.50), picnic potatoes (£5), Goan fish curry (£9.25) and a Mowgli slaw (£2.50). We each had a Chilli Mango Margarita (£8.75) which was delicious and had a big hit of chilli, plus a large bottle of water (£4.50). The food was so interesting that I went out and got the Mowgli street food cookbook.

The staff were also helpful and pleasant.

Note that the restaurant does add a 10% service charge.

We mentioned the noise to our waitress as we were paying and she apologised. However, what would have otherwise been a great experience was spoilt by the corporate event. I would suggest that in future the restaurant is closed if it is being used for what is essentially a private event, or at least warn diners before...

An absolute gem of a restaurant - from the food through the decor and on to the atmosphere.

Let's get over the - is it authentic, is it super spicy blah blah blah. The food is flavourful, well prepared, presented and to my taste buds at a level of heat and flavour I immensely enjoyed.

On arrival we were seated promptly, sadly missed out on a swing (can these be demanded lol) menu explained and drinks ordered.

Drinks arrived at table at a reasonable pace and food order taken - when discussing choices with the server - he suggested we had a little cross over with some flavour combos and bread servings and we took suggestions and tweaked our order.

As Romesh Ranganathan had a field day in his set for wagamamas - Mowgli does have the the "dishes will arrive when the chef produces" which always feels like a bit of timing issue - but the dishes came out with a small pause between the "main curry/rice/bread" even though there are no mains as such.

Food was lovely - and great sharing situation with the tapas style presentation and plate to gather your foraged foods from the table selection.

Pricing is a little on the expensive side but still just in that reasonable £30 per head bracket for a belly full of flavours

Personal favourites were the monkey wrap and chat bombs.

Will definitely return to gain a swing seat.

For a Tuesday evening it was busy, without service feeling rushed or a prompt to vacate your table - it is good to see hospitality doing brisk trade on a...