Mowgli Street Food Charlotte Street — Restaurant in London

Ah Mowgli, an entirely made-up name of a confused character supposedly from India derived from the mind of a British imperial racist. Wait, surely that can't be right! What about the positive and cutesy associations with innocence and wonder imprinted by the likes of Disney on our brains... bare necessities and all that! Perhaps the owner herself simply just wants you to forget about your worries and your strife. That's a lot of forgetting... Fitting then that this restaurant is hardly a memorable one!

Let's start with the positives: this restaurant is based in the prime location of Charlotte Street amidst other gastronomic players. And as you step through the front, the ambience of the interior - with its Diwali-like lines of fairy lights and a dash of Indian artwork - encourages a surge of excitement for genuine fare from the subcontinent. If you're lucky enough to have booked them, you can even sit at a table with swing seats - these are moving seats suspended from the ceiling designed to evoke the joy of childhood. The temperature is well maintained and it's not too loud when busy. You'll also find the food is served in metal plates that are reminiscent of what you'd encounter on street-side stalls in India.

So far so good, however, that's where the positives mostly end. As we waited to be acknowledged upon entry, a waiter approached us in a rather cold manner. After standing at the busy entrance for about five minutes dodging exiting patrons in the tight space, he eventually found a table for our booking upstairs.

Having been seated and given two standard menus, we asked our waitress for a vegan menu - this is always a good sign when provisioned and as other reviewers mention, there are a fair few options for a plant-based diner to choose from.

However, the food we received was not what you'd necessarily find at other Indian restaurants - there is a degree of fusion and experimentation in the menu which is a welcome quirk. It all sounds potentially exciting, but that potential actually ends up being confusing and average-tasting at best.

The interesting-sounding ginger and rhubarb dahl was so diluted, the water separated from the lentils and spread across our plates. Our rice contained small undercooked clusters which is awful to encounter when one is expecting soft and fluffy grains. And the supposed 'showstopper' which was the Holy Chow felt poorly thought-out as if someone sprinkled chana masala over a supermarket loaf. We did mention to our somewhat sleepy waitress that we didn't want coriander, however all dishes still came with it topped - in the end we had to frustratedly pick it out. We prayed that the fancy named mocktails would be better... nope. Poorly-mixed to be too sweet or too watery to the extent that someone in the kitchen probably forgot to check if they were even palatable.

To top off our unexpected experience, the end of our bill had a service charge attached along with a donation to an unmentioned charity.

This is a business that says 'I want to walk like you, talk like you' but underneath knows it's not an authentic Indian experience. A rebrand and change of chef might save it, but otherwise one...

We visited the Mowgli restaurant on Charlotte Street and were excited about tasting the food. The restaurant was very nice and the service was very good as well but the food was awful.

Where do I start, let’s start with the drinks. I ordered a mango lassi. The lassi came to me hot, I’ve had a lot mango lassi’s in my time never had one presented in a hot glass with the lassi completely warm and curdled due to the heat.

I bypassed the drink as a one off and we went on to the starters and the kids mains. For the starters I got the yogurt bombs and the sticky chicken. For my daughter’s mains I got her the butter chicken and rice and a puri. The yogurts were decent, we really enjoyed the flavour inside those but that was where my food experience stopped.

The sticky chicken had no flavour, there was no hint of spice to it, nothing to uplift the sticky texture. Equally, I ordered my daughter’s mains and within 5 minutes, the food was at the table which raised red flags to me. How do you produce food that quickly? Lo and behold, the food was not great, the chicken sauce was nothing like a butter chicken, it had a sweet tomato taste with no salt and any other seasoning that would lift the dish..

For our adult mains, we ordered butter chicken and the Mowgli paneer with Roti and Puri. Firstly both curries were awful in taste, they came out in minutes of ordering them and literally had no seasoning to them and to add to this, I ended up finding a hair strand at the end, completely disappointing. The staff were so quick to get the food out that the roti wasn’t even properly cooked. I could still see raw dough.

I asked for it to be taken away and to the credit of the waiter, he decided to bring me another plate but again we had the same issue, the roti came out within minutes and was raw again. The roti was raw for starters but plain, no butter to or ghee on it to lift the flavour. If that is how it is supposed to be, there is clearly a disconnect on what should be served.

The waiting staff and the manager were all great to their credit but I am honestly disappointed at the level of food being put out. I paid £100 for the food(after dishes being taken off the bill) and I was completely ripped off given the level of food being put out on the tables.

I am an indian and I can say hand on heart, I would get better food in Wembley/southall for half the price of Mowgli. You go to these sorts of places and expect an uplift and I am one that loves paying for really good food however, I can definitely say that I will never be visiting this establishment ever again and will warn people that I know, not to waste their hard earned money on food that is simply not tasty.

I think Mowgli needs to worry less about speed of delivery and more on...

This was our first visit to Mowgli and honestly, it’s hard to think of a scenario when we’ll be back. The service on the day apart from the initial welcome, was atrocious! My partner and I both felt our waitress didn’t have any menu knowledge when we asked questions about some of the dishes. It also took 25 mins for anyone to take our order and it would have been longer had I not waved at them to get their attention. Also after an hour of being at the restaurant and having waited for our first order, we had just received our mains and were approached by the manager to say that we have 15-20 mins left as the table needs to be given to another group of 3 instead. Besides the fact that we’re being rushed to eat, we also didn’t request the table we were given, so would have happily moved if that option was given. After speaking with the manager about this to say we’re not happy with how we’ve been treated, he only then advised that they made a mistake and we can have 45 mins further on the table, at which point we had already rushed through our mains, so there was no point staying for longer. We originally wanted dessert and a couple more drinks, but the way we were treated made us not want to stay and put any more money into the restaurant. Other than that, the food was decent albeit a bit on the sweet side (which we didn’t like that much) and we both think this is so Mowgli can cater to a larger audience rather than being more authentic. Also, we both felt the music was very ‘top of the pops’ and doesn’t really make sense in an Indian restaurant even if it is modern. The music can play a big part in having the right atmosphere and having Justin Timberlake ‘Strawberry Bubblegum’ playing in the background wasn’t it. Modern Indian music, even instrumentals would have upgraded the atmosphere and ambience much more. I’d say...