There is a Best Mangal and a Best Mangal 2 on the same road, and owned by the same people. I point this out as a friend invited me to dinner at Best Mangal. She had given the address of Best Mangal 2 but the name Best Mangal, so while myself and another friend sat in one, the person we were meeting sat in the other. If something of a pain, it was resolved and does at least mean I can tell you that the menus are virtually identical but with a couple more items at BM2. The décor in BM2 is attempting to be more upmarket and has the feel of a proper restaurant, where as the original is essentially a very small caff. The prices are the same at both, which would seem to make BM2 the obvious choice. I'm not so sure though, the extra menu items weren't terribly appealing (prawn and avocado salad in a Turkish kebab house anyone?) and the original had a certain authentic charm lacked by its notionally posher brother. That said, we were only in BM long enough to have a small beer before the confusion was resolved (thank God for mobile phones) and we then all trekked across to BM2 so I can't comment on the food in the original.

So focusing on the restaurant were we actually ate, the décor was in the standard misguided ethnic goes upmarket idiom. Particularly memorable was a fake garden visible through a window at the back. This consisted of one of those twee wooden wishing wells available from garden centres, alongside a sun painted on a concrete wall and some stone chippings. The lighting of this feature only worked for some 3 seconds in every 30, whether through an intermittent fault or an attempt to hide what was a fairly poor effort I cannot tell you. (Turkish restaurants seem to go in for this type of thing more than most, I have hazy memories of a good restaurant in Green Lanes with a rockery and waterfall on the back wall).

In the authenticity stakes, I did notice what in Turkey seemed to be a de riguer accessory- a glass fridge with a rotating rack containing only a couple of rice puddings, which I took as a good sign. Even more promisingly was a large charcoal grill, though not as prominently located as in its sibling restaurant, the cooking was still clearly visible.

I over ordered as I was in something of an odd mood, only just being persuaded not to order kidneys by friends who know I only like them in small quantities with steak in a pie. Otherwise, even in notionally good restaurants I have found the hint of ammonia off-putting. What I did order was Iman Bayildi (stuffed aubergine), Ciger (liver) with sumac and some muska boregi (cheese pastries). The Iman Bayildi was a really good example, sweet and oniony with a good non-bitter aubergine flavour and enough oil to mingle the flavours together without being greasy. It was served more as a salad than a stuffed aubergine but was delicious.

Also successful was the liver, packed with flavour, a bit more overcooked than I would like but this is normal in Turkey, the offal taste was clear but not overpowering and the sumac and paprika gave a real savoury tang. This was another good dish, not quite as well executed as the aubergine. Much less successful were the boregi, the pastry was fairly greasy and oversized, nor were they as warm as they might have been. The cheese and parsley interior was fine, but had nothing to lift it, overall I have had much better.

I had also meant to order patlican ezmi, the white aubergine puree, but had forgotten. This was a good thing as the volume of food would have been getting silly, and in any event it was on one of my friends mixed cold meze starter. The patlican was not a great example, being very much on the bland side, too much yoghurt and not enough of either the garlic or the aubergine. Again fine, but not special in any way. As a side note the mixed cold platter was ordered by two of my friends, and whilst overall there was an excess of food, it did seem a little on the mean side between the two of them and I think it would make sense when in a group for everyone to order a dish or two and share the more interesting options. I should add that another friend had grilled halloumi, which she loves. It tasted like grilled halloumi, which I daresay is the aim.

With the starters done reasonably well, we moved on to what should be the star of an okcabasi restaurant, the grilled meats. I had ordered quail in keeping with my slightly odd mood. It proved a mistake. In many ways my own fault as I know quail, especially at these prices, will be farmed and bland. What there's not much excuse for is it being thoroughly dry which this was. In case the problem was only with my quail, I nabbed some lamb sis from a friend's mixed kebab. Unfortunately this too was on the dry side, the cubes being too small and it was pretty bland lamb, neither as tasty or juicy as you might reasonably expect.

I had assumed the main courses would come with some rice which they didn't. But that said there was plenty of bread and no shortage of food in general. Its just that I really like the turkish way of doing pilao so it was a pity not to get a spoonful with the kebab. The bread was the standard poppy seed covered light Turkish stuff, warm and good, though I think reheated rather than completely fresh, but pretty decent all the same.

I didn't have room for any baklava or the aforementioned authentic looking rice puddings and so we settled the bill. Because I had completely over-ordered mine came to £30, ordinarily a meal here would be £20-25. I should point out that includes beers, Effes at £2.75 a glass, which sounds a bargain, but they seemed to be very small glasses, they may have been 330ml but they didn't seem that way.

Overall this was a bit of a disappointment, it was chosen by a friend not me, but when I looked it up online I was enthused. All I can say is that the number of people giving it a 10 on London-eating is dodgy to say the least. Best Mangal 2 does some things well but it lets itself down in a lot of areas and overall is no better than OK. If it was in my neighbourhood I would go as its not bad, but don't be fooled by some of the online suggestions that this is one of the best Turkish restaurants in London.

On a final note I haven't mentioned the service which was friendly, efficient and unobtrusive. Which makes a change!

Just a quick note on a place I popped in for a lunch after yet another morning in Harrow. (Its getting silly now- I'll have to change the name of the blog to eating out in North West London.)

I have just bought a copy of the Charles Campion Restaurant Guide having not owned a copy for several years. I've mentioned before that I have limited faith in Time Out but the reverse is true for Mr Campion, who is undoubtedly my favourite critic. It looks like there's plenty of places still for me to try up in the grim north west, but on the down side, I'm unlikely to get through them all and start heading to un-heralded places anytime soon.

Anyway, I digress. I tried out Sanghaman before getting my copy of Mr Campion's guide, on the basis of a “critics choice” red star in Time Out. I know now that its also well regarded by Charles Campion so is very much on the beaten path in Wembley terms. This is only a short description as I had lunch alone so didn't have the opportunity to try a lot of the fairly extensive menu.

My waiter was very friendly but there was a bit of a language barrier so I wasn't quite sure what I'd ordered. This wasn't helped by the structure of the menu which rather assumes you know what you're getting. I ordered what I thought was a starter called Channa Battura, from a menu section called “Traditional Tops”. When it arrived I realised I'd had it before in India but forgotten the name. It isn't a starter but is a curry with an enormous puffed up bread, eaten often as a breakfast in India and substantial enough to be a main course. No matter, I ploughed on.

The bread gets puffed up by being deep fried, but despite that was light and not at all greasy. The bread is used to eat the chick pea based curry. The curry was strongly spiced and finished with a lot of freshly made garam masala. There was no shortage of chilli heat and the clear flavour of jeera but unfortunately the dish was a bit oily and the texture not quite as thick and chunky as it might have been. This was a good dish with strong fresh spicing, but it wasn't in any way exceptional.

I'd ordered a salt lassi, resisting the temptation of a lager at lunch and it came quickly along with tap water. The lassi was unadorned which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It was a bit on the thick side and slightly oversalted for a cold winter day, but was a perfectly workmanlike accompaniment to the fairly hot food.

I was already pretty full when my main course arrived, a dish of Dingri Mutteer which the waiter had recommended. The waiter had told me it was a pea and baby corn curry, which is exactly what it was. Oddly though, a bit of internet research tells me the name normally refers to pea and mushroom. As I say, the waiter had told me and I can't pretend I knew it should be mushrooms so no complaints on that score.

The curry was strong on turmeric, and was flecked through with a lot of finely diced red chilli. This gave it a kick but it wasn't too hot and the fieriness was tempered by fresh coriander and the aforementioned lassi. This was a good dish, plenty of peas that somehow had not been overcooked. The same can be said for the baby corn which had a satisfying crunch.

Essentially this place delivered good food, freshly made. The bill was £7.50 and the service was friendly. But its not as stand out as Dadima with nothing really exceptional and it wouldn't be worth a trip out on its own account. That said if your in the area and have already tried Dadima, its certainly worth a look, though there are many promising alternatives, on which on current form I'll be reporting in due course!

I really don't know why it took me so long to go to this place, its near where I work, is well priced and has been famous since I was so young that I would have been happy with any food that came with Ketchup. I'm glad I've finally gone but regret all the missed opportunities. I guess that tells you what I thought of the place...

First things first, The Eagle is famous as the first Gastropub, with a food focus since 1992. Thats right - 16 years, which is pretty impressive. I expect there are pubs that would dispute the claim, but it has everything we now associate with the genre- miss-matched cutlery, miss-matched rickety chairs, bare floorboards etc. All of that can be a bit irritating, but its seems more acceptable when your in the original, not in a copy.

I know it has changed hands since the original owners, and based on the fact that their blackboards said “Why not try the Anchor & Hope or Great Queen St?” I suspect there is now a connection, though I haven't ever read that elsewhere. It does have a bit of the feature that makes Anchor & Hope so irritating, namely tables that aren't really designed to eat off, a long wait to get a seat and an atmosphere so noisy you have to shout to be heard by dining companions.

Somehow though I found all that much less annoying than I do at the Anchor & Hope. I thing there are two reasons for it, firstly the wait wasn't anywhere near as long so I didn't get utterly trashed at the bar. OK it was a Tuesday night but it was prime time and even Tuesday's are a nightmare at Anchor & Hope. Secondly I was less concerned because of the prices. If the original Gastropub ideal was about good value, good food then I'm not sure Anchor & Hope meets the first of those demands. Prices there are firmly restaurant, whereas prices at the Eagle are largely less than a tenner for a main course. Maybe its a little hypocritical but I'm not sure, I think I'm justified in being happy to put up with more hassle and less service in a place where I can eat and drink well for less than £20 a head than I am in a place where bills are frequently double that.

Anyway, all of the above would matter not a jot if the food wasn't up to scratch, but as you can tell from the overall tenor, it was. The food here is heavily Mediterranean influenced, there's a lot of grilled fish, all fresh, simple but good. I seem to remember a lot of places like this being quite Italian or Spanish influenced, before everywhere went all Modern British. Its nice to see there's still room for both.

The Eagle is still a pub, serving well kept Charles Wells beer which went down a treat whilst we waited for a table. Its worth noting at this point that the barmaid who served us was happy and helpful throughout, and I had no complaints of the waiter who found us our table and served our food. I only mention this as service gets a bit of a kicking on some of the review sites, and even Charles Campion describes it as “with attitude”. There was no checking from the waiter how we were getting on, and no opportunity to check the wine, but hey this is a pub charging pub prices. At least the wine came with wine glasses!

We'd gone for a bottle of wine with our food from a small wine list chalked up. It may be small but I guess its changed fairly often. It also offers exceptional value and whilst not perhaps terribly exciting, it did have some items of interest and based on our bottle was well chosen. We'd plumped for a Valtorto 06 from the Douro for a bit of a change. This was a very upfront, no oak, plum and cherry mouthful of a wine, it had a bit of complexity on the finish, was good fun and a bargain at £14 in a pub.

There were no starters as such but there were items marked up as tapas that could have been pressed into service. We launched straight into the main courses instead, and I opted for a Rabbit Cacciatoria. Now I looked up that term and found a definition on “Gourmet Britain” (no I hadn't come across it before either) that said it meant huntsman style and in essence denotes the inclusion of wild mushrooms. Wikipedia has a similar definition for al Cacciatore, so I assume its accurate. My version didn't have any wild mushrooms that I noticed but it was delicious. What it did have was tomatoes, anchovies, olives and a bit of heat. It was like a very mild arrabiata but it tasted fresh and went superbly with the rabbit, which I hadn't really expected. The rabbit was wild and would have been a bit on the dry side but the sauce prevented that being a problem. The plus side of it being wild was it was packed with flavour. This was all served on a bed of serviceable mashed potatoe, making it a massive, hearty and altogether successful dish.

My friend had gone for Napoli sausages which came with green lentils. This was more sourcing than cooking I guess, but the sausages were perfectly grilled, crisp on the outside and moist in the middle. They were very spicy and the lentils worked well in taking the edge off. A simple but good dish, again served in a massive portion.

The only dessert on offer was pasteis de neis, the portugese egg tarts. We were both full and we decided to leave them and so we only had a main course. Thats great though, we left full and happy and including the bottle of decent wine we'd spent £17 a head, not counting a couple of beers beforehand. The beers incidentally were less than £3 a head, which believe it or not is pretty good in central London.

This is not haut cuisine, but its tasty, interesting well sourced and well cooked. Its a noisy crammed place but at these prices that makes it a “buzzy atmosphere” rather than bloody annoying. If you haven't been, go here because its cheap and good, if you haven't been for a few years go to remind yourself why we all fell in love with Gastropubs in the first place.

As noted below, having never been sent to Harrow, since going there of my own volition to try Masa, I have been sent there twice. On one of those occasions, having finished early and seeking lunch I walked past Masa. I was happy to see the same waitress still there, but having not tipped at all last time, I was slightly embarrassed and decided against going back in so soon after. [A note to my surprising number of American readers, we have a minimum wage here so there really is no obligation to tip at all for actively bad service, I'm sure I was in the right, but will admit I was still embarrassed].

There are a whole host of places in Wembley I've been meaning to try and as its only a couple of stops on the central line I decided to head in that direction. Arriving in Wembley is a whole lot cheerier than arriving in Harrow, obviously at lunch it was daytime which I take into account, but nonetheless the place had a real vibrancy, with the arch of the new stadium visible and a whole host of interesting shops and restaurants on the road to Dadima.

Dadima is a bit of a walk from Wembley central, I think there is a nearer tube – Alperton, but if your there in the daytime the walk is worth it. There are loads of Indian and Sri Lankan restaurants on the way, most of which have escaped the attention of the guidebooks. Nonetheless, a lot of them were full of happy looking diners and if I was in the area more often I imagine they'd be well worth a go. I especially fancy the Sri Lankan efforts, having enjoyed Sekara and needing something to compare it to. Quite a lot of the Indian restaurants advertise both Indian and Chinese food, a common thing on the subcontinent, and if their true to the form shown there, the Chinese will be less than great but the Indian pretty good.

Dadima's itself has been recommended in several publications, or of course I wouldn't have heard of it, and on this occasion I walked past the other restaurants and aimed for my original destination. The cuisine is Kenyan/Gujurati, but in any event it is very good. I ordered the special Thali which at £5.99 represents probably the best value food in London. For that tiny sum, I had a samosa (recorded as a farsan on the menu, which I think just means snack), 3 vegetable curries, a dahl, chappatis, rice, raita, a poppadom, a gulab jamun and a salt lassi. None of the food was poor, and some was properly great.

I should probably mention the décor, but I don't think there was any. This is a large unadorned room with cafeteria chairs and tables, and that authentic feel coupled with the local ethnic makeup and the host of nearby vegetable and indian cookery shops (about which, more later) meant that when my friendly waiter brought (unasked) a glass of water, my brain took half a second to compute that the water would be safe to drink!

Shortly afterwards my lassi arrived, and it was deliciously refreshing, with a small amount of cardomon on top that lifted it, and otherwise nothing fancy and just salty enough. At the same time my poppadom arrived, this was warm which was nice but it had been bought in and was one of the spicy type. This was probably the least good item of the meal, but it was still perfectly fine.

Shortly afterwards the thali arrived. The samosa was very good, the pastry was not quite as crisp as it might have been but it was grease free. The filling was different from the norm with a multi layered flavour, but I'm afraid I couldn't tell you exactly what was in there. Alongside a real savoury quality it finished with a decent chilli hit and was overall very impressive, though not quite the best I've had. [As a side note, the best samosas I've had in Britain have been from the Amaya Indian sweet shop on Drummond street- very crispy, served warm, packed with flavour and at 60p each, the best lunch option near Euston, not withstanding the all you can eat buffets on the same street!]

One of the three curries was very watery, in fact it was entirely liquid and appeared quite unpromising. Appearances can be deceptive though, and in fact this was possibly the best dish. It wasn't at all oily, and the tomato sauce was spiked with a strong but not excessive hit of liquorice and star anise. When some rice was stirred in to add substance and this curry was eaten with the decent warm chappatis, the overall effect was delicious.

The second curry was a potatoe based dish and this was overall a bit of a disappointment. Leaving aside the question of whether more carbs were called for in a meal that already contained rice and chappatis, the curry was just a little too oily. That said the spicing was clear and you probably wouldn't complain if your local curry house was at this standard. Things improved again with the third curry, a dense, liquid free mix of green beans and green peppers and chillis. The heat was not as fierce as you might expect but it certainly had a kick, but the flavours of pepper came through cleanly and it was an excellent dish.

The dahl was also noteworthy, it wasn't different in style from a everyday dahl (unlike say Sekara). However, it was in the thick style of dahl, and a little unusually had been made with black eyed beans. It made an interesting change and had a strong nutty flavour. It was an excellent accompaniment to the other dishes, as well as providing some much needed protein.

The sweet was gulab jamun. I've said previously that I'm not a big fan of Indian desserts and this was not going to convert me. However, it was fine of its type, not inedibly sweet and the centre of the sweet wasn't dry as it can be.

The service had been excellent, unobtrusive but thorough and happy throughout. Perhaps because I still felt a little guilty about Masa and perhaps because the meal was so cheap, I left what in percentage terms was a decent tip. I still only spent £10 on what was a superb lunch. Obviously I had the advantage of being in the area, but I would say if you like authenticity and incredible value then it is worth the trip out.

As I walked back to the tube, I went into several wholesale/retail suppliers of rice and vegetables and can say this would be a great place to shop if you like cooking Indian food (though I couldn't partake, it wouldn't have looked great going back into work). I then went into some great cookware shops, which had everything from authentically rusty karahi dishes (they'll be fine after proving) to £400 robo-coupes, suggesting that at least some of the kitchens are equipping on a pretty high level.

I resisted the temptation to buy a 50” karahi and an outside gas burner to put it on, though given the authentic surroundings I was happy to note it had a CE safety approval label on. I also resisted the option to buy swastika bedecked incense burners, reasoning it might be misunderstood! I had seen these in India but was surprised to see them in London, but glad too, it felt thoroughly authentic and why shouldn't Hindus reclaim their symbol outside of the subcontinent. I am pretty sure I'll be going back to Wembley, even if work doesn't oblige.