Sheba Restaurant - Awarded Best Curry House In UK — Restaurant in London

If you have not been to a curry house in Brick Lane, where have you been?! It is a fun experience wandering down with different curry houses fighting to get your custom. With all the enticing smells, how can you resist!

We stopped off at family owned and run, Sheba Restaurant, which has been opened since 1974. They have most recently been awarded East London Chef of the Year at the Asian Restaurant and Takeaway Awards 2018.

Obviously we had a couple of beers with the meal but we also loved the fresh mango lassi’s.

We kicked off with some Popadums (£1) each with four different sauces – onion salad, mint sauce with a hint of mango, mixed pickles and mango chutney. You just can’t go wrong with these crispy delights and the pickles were absolutely amazing.

We moved on to the Spiced Lamb Sheek Kebab (£4.25) cooked in the tandoori oven and the Chicken Chaat Puri (£4.95) cooked with fresh herbs and chat masala served in desi fried bread. The lamb was served with salad and a delicious dressing. The chicken was particularly good – just the perfect amount of spice and the bread was so light and fresh.

Where do you start with the curries?! The menu is split into different sections including tandoori delights, Sheba all time favourites, traditional dishes, chef signature dishes and veggie dishes. After some careful thinking we tried a Shofri Ghust (£11.95), a Traditional Bangladeshi dish slow cooked with soft lamb and fresh Bengali pumpkin. The dish combines the natural sweetness of the pumpkin and spices resulting in a hot and sweet medium strength. We also tried the Chicken Xacuti (£11.95) a Goan dish with chicken, coconut milk, yoghurt and fairly hot spices creating a dish full of flavour. This is the perfect choice for someone who loves a sauce-y curry with a coconut base but with an extra punch!

Accompanying the curries we had a garlic naan (£2.90), peshwari naan (£3.20) and pilau rice (£3.20). We also could not resist a Bombay Aloo (hot spiced potato dish) which was pretty epic (£3.95) and the Tarkadaal (£3.95).

Sheba curry house in Brick Lane offers great traditional food at very reasonable prices. There is space for dining upstairs and downstairs and the atmosphere on a Friday evening was vibrant and friendly. The staff were lovely and we would definitely return! Keep an eye out on their website for special offers and you can also Bring...

It was my birthday night. A meaningful celebration of growing another year older, stepping further into manhood. I booked a table for me and my friend due to the ‘award winning’ reputation of Sheba.

The dips with the poppadoms were so big we didn’t finish them, an unbelievable fact due to my endless greediness and hoover belly, too much food is always a plus in my book. The rest of the portions were perfect. Perhaps the mixed started was a bit shy on the variety and mass. The staff were wonderful, warm and kind.

The English gentleman next to us were perhaps too rowdy, spilling an entire pint of Cobra aggressively across the table, my new adidas kicks, gently splashed to my horror. “How uncivilised”, I thought to myself.

As an Irish man I have a particularly soft spot for English ‘lads’ (cough cough), so I will always paint a memory such as this in my own warped way, mentally tainted by the great hunger, flickering mental images of balaclavas and badly scrawled IRA tags on 1980s secondary school desks with chipped yellow varnish, perfect 90 degree, hard, back bending seats to keep Irish children disciplined like they were a litter of bold, inconvenient Jack Russell Terriers.

I moved on from the highly inappropriate incident and continued with the luscious butter chicken, the tender lamb sagg, the heavenly sweet peshwari naan and I laughed the night away. As we unstrapped our belts and proceeded to request the bill, we were presented with a stunning, warm, moist paper towel in a black plastic sachet branded with an eye catching red rose graphic. The towel felt like God massaging my face as I groaned in ecstasy with a full belly and a sedated face of joy.

“Surely the Easter eggs and treats had reached climax at this point” I pondered to myself.

Wrong!..A small, unique square chocolate was displayed to me via the receipt holding device. A chocolate which I have never seen before and did not document therefore I cannot find it. It only lives on in my mind. I feel my mouth water as the electricity in my brain renders the memory of this little brown geometric gift. For me, this adds an extra layer of magic, wonder and mystery to the one and only Sheba...

Disappointing Experience at the “Best Curry House in the UK”

We recently dined at Sheba on Brick Lane, a restaurant that claims to be the best curry house in the UK. Unfortunately, our experience didn’t live up to the hype.

We booked a table with a 50% discount offer, but the friendly waiter insisted on calling to confirm whether the discount was valid, which seemed odd since it was clearly advertised on their website. Thankfully, it was accepted—paying full price for this meal would have been a mistake.

When we arrived, the restaurant was completely empty. Even on a Monday, you’d expect at least a few customers if the food is truly exceptional, but that wasn’t the case. This was our first red flag.

We started with samosas, which were fine. However, the main dishes were a major disappointment. We ordered butter chicken, tikka masala, chana masala, rice, and naan. The butter chicken was the worst I’ve ever had, and I’m not exaggerating. The chicken was tough and dry, the sauce tasted oddly of coconut (which doesn’t belong in butter chicken), and the color was brownish rather than the vibrant orange it should be. The tikka masala was slightly better but still the worst I’ve had. The chana masala was okay—not bad, but not remarkable either. Unfortunately, even the rice and naan were subpar, with the naan needing more time in the oven to crisp up properly.

Another disappointment was the soft drinks being served from large bottles instead of individual ones. This detracts from the dining experience and feels unprofessional.

The only redeeming quality of our visit was the service. The staff were kind and attentive, and we have no complaints in that regard. However, a restaurant’s primary focus should be the food, and that is where Sheba completely failed to deliver.

One more thing to note is the suspicious nature of their online reviews. Many seem to come from accounts with very few contributions, which makes them less trustworthy. Don’t be fooled by the glowing ratings online.

Overall, we left Sheba feeling deeply disappointed. Even with the discount, it didn’t feel worth the money. We wouldn’t recommend this...