Kateh — Restaurant in London

Took my girlfriend for a late Sunday lunch to Kateh in Maida Vale following a recommendation from my mother. Upton arrival, expectations were high: set in a quiet residential street, a small number of tables and most of the other diners seemed to be well heeled Iranians - a very good sign in an Iranian restaurant! We ordered some Nan, Kask e bademjan and sabzi panir as a starter to be followed by one kebab Chenjeh and one Kebab Torsh (lamb) as main course.

We were extremely impressed with the presentation when the starters arrived. The kash e bademjan looked like a work of art with the head part of an aubergine still visible on the dish. This is where the problems started: it looked amazing, but tasted nothing at all like a kask e bademjan. It was actually quite dry, the aubergine totally tasteless and nowhere near enough kask. I've had this dish in a lot of different Persian restaurants and this one was the best looking but by far the worst tasting interpretation I've come across. Thankfully, I had a nice diet coke (little bottle) to wash down the terrible starter. To be fair, I must say the sabzi panir was fine, though it'd be hard to screw that up.

I ordered a glass of doogh to drink with the kebab for the main course and its arrival marked the start of the really horrible experience. It looked like they had brought two kebab torsh and no chenjeh. Having politely enquired as ensure that my girlfriend's kebab torsh wasn't someone else's plate, she said "don't worry, I don't mind having this instead of what I ordered" and the waiter left. However, as I cut the first piece of my kebab, I saw that it was actually totally white inside. Asked a nearby waiter who asked the original waiter to come back. At this stage, he starts telling me that it's joujeh (chicken) torsh and starts trying to explain that joujeh in Farsi means chicken. I pointed out I fully understood this, but that I hadn't ordered this dish to begin with and didn't want joujeh kebab!

I was frankly appalled by the next suggestion: He would take away my joujeh kebab, take my girlfriend's plate (she had already starting cutting her kebab before this) and give it to me and then get the kitchen to cook a chenjeh kebab for her! There seemed to be no concept in his head that he's asking me to either have cold food by waiting for a new dish to be cooked for my girlfriend or alternatively, we eat separately!

Having been taken back by this, I requested the bill in order to cut our losses and leave. At this stage, the waiter apologised and took both plates for the kitchen to cook what we had ordered to begin with.

Finally, the correct food arrived and once we started eating, we both seriously regretted not having left. My girlfriend's chenjeh, described on the menu as being cuts of filet mignon, was actually tough and chewy and my kebab was badly overdone and completely dry! It was so bad that for the first time in a very long time, I didn't even finish the kebab!

Oh, there was one more problem: with the kebab totally dry and the doogh long finished before the replacement meal arrived, I ordered another diet coke but then my girlfriend noticed that the waiter left and got in his car and another waiter brought my diet coke in a glass (no little bottle this time!) and it was completely flat. Why they couldn't just say: "sorry, we've run out of diet coke", rather than bringing what was totally flat (and obviously from a big bottle) is beyond me.

I didn't want to make a fuss, so just asked for the bill, paid it and left. Oh - be aware: as well as being the worst Iranian restaurant in London, it's one of the pricier ones as well (bill was over £55 with no alcohol and everything ordered mentioned in this review!).

I imagine that this was once a great restaurant that served wonderful food and provided a good (albeit a little pretentious) service. But what I experienced today was a combination of great presentation coupled with terrible food and...

Sad to say but the first disappointment comes from the reviews available on internet. Extremely misleading… Original Iranian… Seriously!? I do understand that every cuisines readapt their recipes to the local taste but I still expect to be able to get something original, like a small percentage of the personnel? Everything in this restaurant, from the personnel to the water served - including the chef, where everything but Iranian. Don’t get me wrong we did eat well(ish), the portions where quite generous and possibly, if the reviews were advertising the restaurant as a fake-Iranian-cuisine this critique would have been a bit less sour (still the chicken was very dry!!) Original Iranian? Really!? If so, you would expect to find few Iranian customers… Not even one. Unfortunately, even though this says a lot about the place, that’s not the end… Very reach menu, a couple of dozens of starters but no even one mix plate for curious palates… So your alternative would be asking the waiter for a good selection of starters. Gloomily and maybe because the waiter knew nothing about Iranian food, his suggestion was to order all the available starters on the menu (20ish!! At roughly £7.00 each!). And in response to our comment that this would have cost us a fortune the waiter brought us a jar of tap water saying: “On the Queen! This won’t cost you a penny!” How rude is this? What the waiter answer would have been if our comment referred to quantity rather than price? “We do take away”!? And just for clarity: we did ordered drinks! And gran final they didn’t serve my favourite rice… with saffron and crust (tahdig). How disappointing… Instead we got a simple steamed (or boiled) rice with a pinch of saffron, probably it was too expensive to season the whole rice with it. Overall I can say that the food wasn’t too bad, but definitely NOT ORIGINAL IRANIAN!!! The service… OMG!!! I never experienced such rudeness in my life from any waiter of any nationality! Disappointed to the point that even if the food was original Iranian and fantastic (which it wasn’t) I would never go there again and I would never recommend...

We had a reservation made on the 11.th of july at 20:15 for two people at the restaurant named “Kateh”. Best way to review this restaurant is to say: “Five-star food with some zero-star waiter!” We are regular customers USUALLY we had nice service and we always satisfied with the food quality. Today one of the waiter ruined our whole opinion about this place! After I asked for the bill, the bill was £69, so I left £70 on the table then I went to the washroom. While my girlfriend was waiting for the waiter to take the payment away.

The waiter arrived to our table and counted that £70. But instead of walking away with the money. He pointed out to my girlfriend on the receipt said:” YOU DO REALISED THAT THE SERVICE CHARGE IS NOT INCLUDED”. My girlfriend answered:Yes. When I came back to the table we just left the change. This waiter chased me said:’” Keep your coins! We don’t need THIS”.

It is customer’s right to decide if they wanna give service charge or not in this case. How ridicules and how dare this waiter to ASK the customer for Money?! I believe if there was £5 left on the table, this waiter would have NEVER chased me up INSIDE of the restaurant! Telling me that “We don’t need it”! But he did chased me up to say - KEEP your change. This is beyond any stand of the restaurant! We wouldn’t ever expecting this to happen!

Regardless that he was clearly not impressed that I did’n tip him. I don’t understand why he need to point this out to a lady. He couldn’t wait for me instead, what does he EXPECT out of this?! Even if we wanted to leave tip, normally the tip should be done by AFTER the waiter took to payment. So which means even we wanted to leave any tip. After for what he said is NOT GOING TO HAPPENING anyway!

His attitude was completely UNEXPECTABLE. We’ve never had any this DISGUSTING experience, basically the waiters ASKING for money and nasty...