Mela Lounge — Restaurant in Stafford

This restaurant is also doing 50% off all food up to the end of tomorrow as part of its extension to #eotho offer.

When you arrive, you go down the stairs and the restaurant is underground as such. The interior represents the majority of Indian restaurants with appropriate music, leather seats, white layed tables and lighting to match. Staff were all dressed smartly as you would expect. Staff greeted me immediately and were wearing PPE with hand sanitiser avaliable and a sign in book as opposed to the usual NHS Test and Trace barcode. Free Wi-Fi was available.

I went for the following today;

Starter - Mix Platter -- Chicken Tikka, Hariyali (Green) Chicken, Kebab and Tender Lamb Chops. A lovely mix of everything here (minus the seafood of course). The green chicken is a popular north Indian choice. It came with a sweet dipping sauce. All the meat on the plate was hot and tender and presentation wise it was appealing. I found no issues with the quality of the meat and enjoyed this very much. There was no spice at all to all the items on this dish though remember I really love spice.

Main - North Indian Chilli Chicken Chicken pieces cooked in 5 spices of sauce and flavoured with garlic, cayenne pepper paste and fresh green chillies. I do love my spice and this was recommended by the staff member. This was the perfect sauce. Hot enough for me to taste it but not enough to not enjoy it. A fair amount of meat is in the curry and you can taste the garlic in this one. A very smooth flavour to it that tastes great.

A tandoori roti accompanies the above. This was nice and fluffy.

This came to £12.90 after #eotho which was excellent value in that respect and can be compared similarly to some set menus but I did have a chefs speciality as opposed to the normal options on a traditional set menu.

I was able to walk in luckily but the restaurant was fully booked after 19:00 so is a popular location. There is a similar location in Birmingham but they were only offering 25%...

Restaurant is ok. Food is not bad but not great. When I was there, I went to the bar to get a drink. One of the staff members behind the bar appeared quite agitated and he was not trying to hide it for sure. I barely gave him my order and he started shouting: "give him the money! Give him the money!" And pointed at another staff member (guy that was shouting could be a manager but I don't really know). I am aware that restaurant staff works under a lot of stress but I'm not there to feel stressed, or rushed. Quite opposite of that actually. The whole situation didn't upset me but I see it as lack of professionalism. So as a summary I really can't leave more than 3 stars on...

Had a fantastic meal here tonight in celebration of my daughters birthday. Did wait for starter, but when it came it was fresh and piping hot, so we'll worth the wait. Main meal was full of flavour and again piping hot in temperature. This is a licensed restaurant but alcohol good value..house rose was pinot grigio at only 10.95..bargain and a 660 ml cobra for £4.50. On a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday they are still doing eat to help out, which makes it even more value. Well done...