Zayna — Restaurant in London

We tried this restaurant after we saw the reviews and the only 2 reasons were: #1. It was only 2 miles from where we were #2. They had eggplant pakoras. BAD Choice!! I wish we hadn’t come! I asked the pakora to be made not too crispy, soft, with just a little crisp- they made it crisp. It was a little hard to bite into it. The couple sitting next to us, had worse pakoras!; his knife and fork almost got away from him as he was trying to cut it! I was looking forward to the lamb biryani-one of the WORST biryanis I’ve ever had! It seems the rice was freshly made, out of the container and they just mixed it with lamb marinated with spices! The mutter paneer was good but contained a little too much oil! The bengan bharta was not to my husband’s liking-could have made it better at home he stated! The raita was average. I liked the achar tray, but it was of small quantity, in little containers. I liked the mango chutney the most- it contained black sesame seeds and cumin seeds , which I liked! The portions were small though and nothing like you’d find in the USA. The gulab jamun was below average, nothing great about them! My husband’s falooda, good but of small size! The masala soda was reasonably good, but, I’ve had better! This place is NOT worth your money!!! The servers don’t even smile ; the man with the beard looks like he wasn’t even happy to do his job!b I got the impression that they hurry to have the food prepared as fast as possible, which defeats the purpose, of pleasing hungry diners! The only really good thing I liked was that the restaurant was clean, even the female bathroom, but, much smaller than you’d find in the USA. The lesson here is 1. Being on a list of one of the 10 best Pakistani restaurants is no indicator of delicious food!! 2. Indian food in England is NOT necessarily better...

The good thing about this place is how consistent they are,,,in being average. Zayna is one of the most average restaurants I have ever been to in London. I mean there was nothing good or bad to talk about this place.

We went to Zayna on a weekend night and the place was almost full. Good thing we booked ahead. One thing that struck out was there was no customer with an Indian or Pakistani background. This to me is a sign that the food wasn't authentic enough. Nonetheless our hope that this place would be a good British Indian/Pakistani restaurant was dashed when they brought out the food.

The chaat was fine but it was only drenched in yoghurt sauce and lacked the tamarind sauce and mint sauce which are also expected to be drizzled on top. The salmon tandoori starter was just okay. The salmon though felt fresh didn't have the flavour one expects from a good tandoori. The portion was also really small.

The mains were relatively better but not by a lot. We ordered the chickpea curry, prawns masala, naan and mushroom rice. Chickpea curry was like, surprise average and I can definitely make a better Chickpea curry than what this was. Mushroom pulao rice was okay. Prawn masala was the only thing that tasted right but was loaded with oil that kind of kills the mood.

At the end the experience is not worth it for me. The value for the money spent was not good so I can't recommend this place. Maybe non-Indians might like this place but to be honest there are many better British Indian restaurants in London that can satisfy both Indian and non-Indian customers really well. I will say...

We were walking down the street and we saw this restaurant and It looked quite nice so we went inside.The first floor looked very good but we could not sit there because it was reserved so we had to sit in the second floor,near the kitchen.The lighting was very poor but at least there was a table to sit and a very clean bathroom. We ordered Dal Tadka and 1 Tandoori Roti but this restaurant has a 3 item policy so we had to ordered Lahore Chana.We wanted 1 Tandoori Roti only bit the man who took our order said "It won't be enough for the three of you" so we had to order one more Tandoori Roti.Our food came and it tasted quite delicious,the Tandoori Roti could be better but I liked he food overall.By the end so much food was wasted, we forcefully had to eat two Tandoori Roti"s instead of one and we could only eat half of our main course.Me and my family felt very bad for wasting so much food.Then the person who took our order said "we are not famous so we insist our customers to order more food". I would like to say this will not help your popularity of the restaurant since the food is good but no one would want to see good food go to waste and give the customer what he wants not what the...