Haweli Barnes — Restaurant in London

My pregnancy craving was butter chicken. My husband ordered from this place thinking they had chefs who knew what they're doing.

Unfortunately, they tried to fob off a chicken korma for a butter chicken. When I called and asked why they sent the wrong dish, the man on the phone checked with the chef who confirmed no he cooked a butter chicken. I said this dish is sweet and coconutty, I asked, do they put cream and coconut into their butter chicken? The man confirmed and said yes that's how you cook it. That is not how you cook a butter chicken. They don't know what they're doing and are clearly just batch prepping sauces to try and save money, and compromise on quality and taste.

Extremely upset and disappointed by this, and with no effort from the restaurant to fix it. The man on the phone just said he would tell the chef to "do it right next time". That gives me no confidence due to what he confirmed to me earlier in the conversation. To anyone who's pregnant or really craving butter chicken, please don't order from here. The taste of the food is mediocre at best and filled with oil. Very poor quality. Never ordering...

Sickly sweet curries with unbalanced flavours. It seemed as though the chef had no taste-buds as all the food had a far too strong a flavour profile, leaning towards a saccharine sugaryness, overly bitter and vinegary, or an unpalatable combination of all three. The menu is very large and varied but clearly the chefs have forgotten how to cook half of the items anyway.

Chapati on the prawn puree was too doughey as was were the naans, thick and stodgy eventually becoming limp and soggy. The radioactive green chicken hirayali came as a menthol mess with a toothpaste like quality, though that could at least be washed down with a nice cold draft kingfisher. It is a shame, as the meal started well with a decent platter of papadums and chutneys, but clearly Haweli's expansionism- having opened several branches around South-West London-has marred the quality of the food by most likely losing decent chefs.

It is possible that it could just have been a bad night, but with some exceptionally good Indian restaurants gracing this part of London, such as Indian Express in West Kensington, no amount of 'sweet-talk' will be...

We used St Margarets' Haweli for years and really loved it so when we moved, we tried the Barnes one and were massively disappointed and didn't try again for a couple of years. We decided to risk it again this week and I feel compelled to review it because it was great – perhaps not excellent, but certainly very good. Maybe they have a new chef, or we just got a bad night last time? Anyway, we'll be back. ––––––––––––––––––– Update: had another take away since my last review and it was decidedly underwhelming: not bad in any way, just not very special. Nice people, good service, but the food can be very......