Sultan of Keswick — Restaurant in England

Tasteless, bland, expensive. It's coming to something when the best part of a meal for two costing change short of £60 is the pickle tray. We both ordered lamb tikka karahi with rice and i had a garlic naan. I had one beer. My partner had a cup of tea. £60!! First the good points. The pickle tray was OK. The rice was OK. Now the bad. The main dishes had more pepper and onion in them than lamb. What lamb was in there was tough. Karahi is a medium curry (2 chilli's on the menu). It had zero spice in it. Bland. It was also just tasteless. Zero spice, zero flavour. When the waiter asked how our meals were I was honest but polite and told him we were a little disappointed in how bland and tasteless it was. He went away and returned with the menu pointing out our curry was only a medium and not supposed to be spicy. OK. Its not meant to blow your head off but the least you expect is to be able to taste some spice. Or an actual flavour! My garlic naan was tiny to be frank, and not very garlicky. The size of a side plate at best. This place obviously survives on tourist trade that only ever visit once. I can't imagine anyone being impressed enough to return. Having come from West Yorkshire (the curry capital of the UK so we know a good curry when we have one) I would say that this was the worst curry we've ever had and the worst meal we have had the misfortune to have together as a couple. When the food was brought out to the table it did not smell of anything and as it turned out tasted just how it smelled. Bland and lifeless, certainly not to the standard we are used to. We were hungry and did not want to waste the food so we ate it but i must say that it had to be forced down. The staff were too busy watching football (Wales v USA in the world Cup) and it took a long time to get their attention. Despite passing them feedback at the end of this meal they have still had the cheek to charge us a £5.45 service fee ! It's been not just a waste of a lot of money but such a great disappointment to end what had otherwise been a lovely day ! ). I would love to save somebody from the disappointment we had. Very poor. Very bland. Very expensive. In fact now that I've scrutinised the bill Ifurther i feel I need to share it.

1 x Cobra £4.90 1 x tea £2.00 2 x poppadoms £1.80 1 x pickle tray £3.10!!! No wonder this was the best bit of the meal!!! Who charges separately for poppadoms and the pickles that go with them??? And £4.90 at that!!!?? 2 x lamb tikka karahi £31.90! 2 x pilau rice £7.00 1 x garlic naan £3.80 Service charge (even after a complaint) £5.45!!!

Avoid avoid avoid.

Edit. 09/09/25 Only just revisited this and noticed that the owner at the time had suggested my review was bogus and that I had been drinking beforehand. Bit rich. The staff would probably not have known if I had been drinking beforehand or not because they were that engrossed in the football rather than their paying customers. The ONLY drinks we had that night were in the restaurant with the very under par meal. We walked from our B&B directly to the restaurant. My poor review was completely truthful and accurate and probably wouldn't have been posted had the staff not been so apathetic to the genuine feedback I gave them first hand on the night. I don't care where you come from. When you pay £60 for two meals you expect some flavour and service. We received neither.

I can only hope this restaurant is now under new management, or the management of the time have since realised how to run a restaurant properly with attentive staff who actually know how to accept constructive feedback, otherwise god help anyone else wanting...

Came here on the opening night, so you would think that they would be bringing their 'A game', unfortunately not though, I ordered the Lamb Chops to start with, only to be told Lamb Chops aren't on - C'mon - it's opening night and they are on the menu! really? so I went for the mixed starter which was ok but not the most generous portion, and no lamb tikka which is usually always part of it. Then the main course....A hot plate arrived with the waiter, shortly after the waiter then appeared and took my plate away again! with no explanation... the reason why would become apparent when my Chicken Chilli Masala appeared with some thoughtless green decoration strewn across it in a large soup bowl/plate. with no other plate to combine the food the rice was then in a bowl of it's own meaning i had to put it on top of the curry, how backwards is this? seriously how is this a good idea...?? Anyway the meal itself was awful, basically there was that much coconut in it was the only thing you could taste, the sauce was luminous red and sloshed about trying to mask the obviously pre cooked chicken pieces that were dry and not at all moist, I complained. He did offer me another meal but by that point I'd given up on the place and refused. He took the price of the main off my bill as you would expect, but when I came to pay they tried to charge me the '2 person' price for my mixed start when I was clearly on my own! I complained again and they halved that charge. Overall a very poor experience, in my top 3 worst curries of all time, if it's this poor on opening night when they should be making a great effort to attract custom and spread good word then there's really little hope, wouldn't eat there again...

A nice place with some great dishes at quite high prices.

My wife and I came here for dinner out and had a generally okay time. The service was pretty quick. The staff were polite and helpful. The poppadoms and chutneys were lovely, the rice was good and the naan was good. I actually thought my curry was really nice, one of the best I've had, but neither me nor my wife were a big fan of her curry. It didn't have much texture to it, and the flavour just wasn't all that nice. She didn't finish her meal which is very unlike her.

I also think it was quite expensive. We recently had a great curry form our local for £21. Here we spent almost £50.

I also really don't like the "service charge". Ours was nearly £5. I look at a menu and see a price, and that's the price I expect to pay. If its actually 10% more than that because of a service charge, just write that correct price on the menu. I'm amazing it's allowed and for that one reason I won't be going back here. It feels sneaky and sly. If you go here, don't trust the price on the menu. They will charge you 10% on top of that as if that's okay.

The decor was nice and everything was clean. The portion size was just right. This place has...