by
londonrestaurant
@ 19/02/2008 - 17:56:46
I recently had an excuse to drag a group of friends to a restaurant of my choice, and effectively had the option to either a) compel them to go somewhere more expensive than they would usually or b) force them to travel further than they would normally. Option b) commended itself at the end of January and so I mulled over where to go. I had read good things about Masa in Harrow from various sources and it had found its way into my to do list as somewhere to go should I ever get sent to Harrow for work. Having never been to Harrow for work in a year and a half, I decided to use this opportunity to make the trip out. (Of course, inevitably, I have since been sent to Harrow twice...)
Arriving in Harrow is pretty bleak, not helped at first by us taking the Harrow exit from the station. Tip- you need the Wealdstone exit! As eventually we got to the correct High Street, a group of young ladies threw a can at a group of young gentlemen. Unfortunately, their aim was somewhat off and it nearly hit us. As we walked down the High Street, we examined options for moving on later, and on balance decided against the self-proclaimed “cheapest pub in Harrow.” As a final obstacle in the increasingly heroic quest to get to this restaurant from SE London, there is a restaurant with a similar name on the same street. Here's another helpful tip- you want the one that doesn't look utterly shit.
The correct restaurant has somewhat bizarre décor, its been described as upmarket by several reviewers but I thought it was very odd. There is a huge chandelier, shiny faux marble surfaces that are very brightly lit and then, to top it off an enormous plasma screen, showing silent Indian movies.
A huge advantage of Masa is that its byo, and we had taken the opportunity to take some pretty decent wines with us, attempting to food match both a gruner veltliner and a good ribera del duero to the food, which we correctly understood to be a mix of Indian and Middle Eastern dishes. Thirsty after our epic journey, we asked for glasses immediately on arrival, but unfortunately it took forever to get them, rather setting the tone for the evening. I know it sounds a bit niggly to complain about a delay in getting glasses in a plcae that doesn't even charge corkage, but this was so long it was really unbelievable, with glasses going to several other tables in the interim.
As indicated above, the service remained poor all night, the waitress later told us it was her first week. I had sympathy for her, but it was a bit beyond, and really the restaurant should not have put her on a table for 7 on a Saturday night. In case you think I'm exaggerating the incompetence, some people had almost finished their entire meal before other people's starters had even been served. The waitress admitted that some orders had just not been sent to the kitchen and its difficult to excuse. Presumably she will have got better by now, but I do have more long-term concerns for a restaurant that's willing to use clearly inadequately prepared staff on a busy night. Also, I am aware that restaurants can have bad covers, but no effort was made to address the problem when we complained, the food is very reasonable and their margins must have been tight, but some token effort to acknowledge how poor service had been would have appreciated.
Moving on, the food, like the country, is between asia and the middle east. A non drinking friend ordered Doogh, clearly the Afghan version of a salt lassi, which had cucumber and cumin in. This made the drink very refreshing and the strong spicing was delicious but unfortunately it was a bit too salty, which would ave made drinking a whole one something of a task.
The menu, especially for the starters, was pretty big on aubergine. Fried Bourani, translated as fried aubergine, came covered in a tomato sauce with a really nutty savoury overtone. I wasn't quite sure what provided the nutty element but this was a very good dish. This was a good thing, as we seemed to have more than we ordered whilst other things may never have came (the haphazard sequence of arrivals made it a bit hard to tell what we had and hadn't had in the end, and in fairness, the incredibly cheap bill removed any need to work it out).
Bourani Afghani, as you will have no doubt worked out, contained more aubergine, this time in a yoghurt and quroot sauce. This was an interesting dish, I am still not sure what quroot is but the texture of the dish was quite mushy and the colour was pale. Much of the aubergine flavour was subsumed by yoghurt and this was overall worth trying but less good than the fried aubergine.
Moving on to the main courses, qabili rice turned out to be rice with a big lump of lamb shank, along with carrots and raisins. The lamb was impressively tender, but somewhat greasy and flavourless. Nonetheless, at the price this was a good dish, and the (to me) unusual combination of cold shredded carrot and raisins in the rice worked very well. The sweetness of both of them comparing well with the savoury rice and matching the sweetness of the lamb. This dish came with far too much rice but thats something of a non-complaint and overall it was very good.
Most of the other main courses were down the line middle eastern, Lamb kebab with challow rice came with lamb that was described on the menu as from baby lamb, certainly it was very sweet and tender and a massive improvement on the lamb with the qabili rice. In fact, its probably one of the best lamb kebabs I've had since I lived in Turkey. Challow rice is essentially a type of pilao, again it was good, very much like turkish rice finished with plenty of butter that really helps emphasise the savoury flavour.
There was one vegetarian in our group, who was very happy with the selection of starters, but a little less inspired by the choice of main courses. She opted for Sabzi Panerr, essentially the classic combination of paneer and spinach, the paneer was better than some but not great, being a little on the chewy side. The vegetarian who likes paneer rather more than I was quite happy with it however.
All dishes came with quite good warm nan bread, and we tried several other dishes, the details of which are somewhat lost but certainly all were above average.
We certainly didn't need more food but would have liked to try some of the interesting sounding desserts on the menu, especially as given the distance we are unlikely to go back. Amazingly though, they had run out of all of them. Bearing in mind we had not gone late, and whilst busy, the place was not packed out, this seems a bizarre lack of planning by the restaurant.
This restaurant was very good value, I should admit that I didn't pay but if the bill had been divided evenly between all of us it would have been about £15 each, even counting the cost of the trip out to Harrow this is insanely good value for London. If Harrow was not so remote from where I live I would definitely go back, and I would recommend this restaurant for the interesting food at great prices. But the terrible service really did take the shine off, and I do have concerns about the way the restaurant dealt with the problem.