Mowgli Street Food Lincoln — Restaurant in Lincoln

In summary: good food let down by some basic customer service mistakes.

First the good stuff, the yoghurt chat bombs are wonderful and the gulab juman is deliciously served in a delicate serving of rose sweetness instead of drowning in a sea of syrup. Love the sharing platter ethos so you get to try lots of different dishes and there are distinct differences not some slight variation of sauce so each bite brings something new to the meal.

The let-downs. Whilst the service was mostly pleasant and some of the staff really helpful in going through the menu, an hour into my 2 hour booking window we're told we have to leave in 20 minutes to free up the table. In a place with tables that aren't even occupied (basically they've mistakenly sat a three person party in a place where they could make up a larger table instead of one of the booths which could easily have accommodated us for the full booking time and instead of taking the embarassment of nicely talking to us, make us aware of the situation, moving us if needed, you know the basic courtesy of treating customers like people, they just issue an ultimatum to finish and leave). This is after we've already waited 10 minutes trying to get attention to order dessert and could have been finished and been out of there early anyway.

Any place that automatically adds an opt out service charge automatically gets a point docked for failing to pay staff properly in the first place. Given the cheap furnishings make you wonder what is justifying the high priced food Any place that automatically charges a charity donation without specifying how much of that donation goes to good causes, specifying what those good causes are, and how much to administratiion needs auditing. From the charity choice website I can find some basic (if unverified) accounts information showing more than 90% goes to the good causes which is a thumbs up from me; however from the Mowgli Trust website I'm seeing the good cause being a dog show, so a thumbs down on transparency of choice as to whether the customers charitable donation is being used for something they would want to support.

So in summary, the food's great, but is the experience good enough to want to go back? I'm...

This could have very easily been a 2 star review, had things not dramatically improved after we sat down. Phoned on Monday afternoon to book a table for around 6pm, and was put through to one of these central phone lines, where we were told the earliest table was 6.45pm. No problem, we'll take it. Turned up on the dot at 6.45 (the place was heaving which is always a good sign) and when I said we have a table booked at 6.45 under my wife's name, the Maitre'd/Bar Tender/Manageress immediately remarked "it was actually booked for 6.15" we explained that we had called and booked (in this day and age we thought it strange that we didn't get a text/email confirmation) but it was clearly going in one and out the other as the lady tapped away on the screen to find us a table. Luckily there was one, and she sat us my Wife turned to thank her for sorting out the mix up, but saw the lady in question gesture and roll her eyes towards another member of staff, and stormed off. Had she been the person serving our table that evening, I would have honestly walked out - this is two days later and I still can't believe the rudeness she showed.

However... She wasn't our waitress, both the waitresses who served us were fantastic and a real credit to a newly opened restaurant, explaining everything clearly and getting our rather long winded order spot on - they were both attentive, polite and chatty.

As mentioned above, the place was very busy on a Monday evening, and the setting is fantastic, though I'd probably get sea sick on the swing bench seats 🤣

The food was quite simply, absolutely exceptional - every dish was packed full of flavour, all very original and a fresh look away from the standard Indian restaurant, and we found there to be plenty in each dish, despite the advice of the server that they were smaller than what you would normally get at an Indian Restaurant.

So after the opening, 2 minutes, this was a fantastic experience, fantastic food and we will be back - But there's maybe a slight problem with the early form of the booking system, and there is definitely something very wrong with the attitude of one...

We ordered the Street Sharer (basically a thali) between four of us and it was lovely, there was more than enough food and we left very full. I would say whilst there was curry left that we couldn't finish, I think more rotis should be provided so there there's 2 each rather than 1 each as we were left without bread to eat the currys with.

The other comment I would make is that I am vegetarian and when I asked to substitute the gunpowder chicken I was only allowed for it to be subbed with fries (when the tiffin already comes with a fried potato dish) or bhel puri, these are basically appetisers and not really an equivalent vegetarian option to the gunpowder chicken, also it's indian food there are lots things i could've been offered that are not potato based. The meat eaters got 3 chicken dishes, it would be nice for them to have had a lamb or fish one for variety. Finally when they served the street sharer which is designed to be shared by the whole table there were not enough spoons for us to put one in each dish and we obviously didn't want to serve different curries with the same spoon, we had to ask for more and were still only given two extra spoons, so we ended up serving one of them with a fork. Also meal lacked greenery would be nice to get a kachumber salad or some dips with it it like raita, when you're serving spicy foods some people who are not used to such flavours might appreciate this, and this is how it is served at actual Indian restaurants.

Finally the service was lacking, we had three different waitresses two of them did the bare minimum, one was friendly. No one offered us a dessert menu (4 of us had the sharer, the 5th person ordered their own food so should've been offered dessert). No one asked us if we'd been to Mowgli before or explained how the dishes work, when other people i know have been told to order three dishes and share. We had to go and ask for the bill because no one came to...