west12's Qype profile

Castle Tandoori is in Elephant and Castle shopping centre, adjacent to the Elephant and Castle Northern Line tube. It is rather like stepping back into the 1970s when you step inside, but there are some very cute touches, such as elephants on the (worn!) carpet! In the daytime it does all you can eat buffets for around £6. In the evening there's an a la carte menu. We opted for a chicken dansak, a chicken jalfrezi, and a daal. Chicken was good quality and tender but all of the dishes were swimming in grease; as was the daal. Service was friendly and you get a free After Eight mint at the end (is that 70s style or 80s style?!) but I couldn't particularly rave about the food.

This is the second Fire and Stone in London, and the two branches specialise in interesting pizza toppings - I had the Bombay, covered in spicy marinated chicken, raita, mango chutney with the usual cheese and tomato base. My partner ate a Lombok - prawns and hoi sin if I remember rightly - and our friend an Acauplco, which is basically a big pile of chilli, soured cream and jalapenos on a pizza base.

The ambience is nice enough for something that's entrely prefab in a shopping centre and the finishing of the restuarant is fine. We went on a Tuesday though and like the Covent Garden branch it suffers from excruciatingly slow service - the table next door watched their pizzas slowly cool on the counter for literally five minutes before a waitress could be bothered to do anything and it took them no less then ten minutes after our drinks order to figure out they didn't have draught beer on that day.

The drinks are extremely overpriced (see the website for continual good offers at the branch though) and I agree with the previous poster about the pizza bases - they tend to be thick, a bit soggy, and a little chewy.

interesting but it's not a huge favourite of mine.

If Tiger Tiger did curry houses, Mint Leaf would be it.

We went for a meal and were slightly wary, being greeted at the door by a bouncer. There are few restaurants in London I've visited with a bouncer on the door, on a Tuesday night.

The inner decor was, to be honest, quite dark and blingy. Management clearly pay little attention to detail: the toilets were filled with cryptic laminated signs on the paper towel dispenser to "Please use handryer" (?!), and there was scaffholding clearly visible around the reception desk.

The food was really diabolical. I had a disaster of mackerel in a creamy coconut sauce, which is probably the worst meal I've ever had in such a pricey restuarant. The lamb rogan josh was only OK.

Service was lovely and non-pretentious, which gives it two stars. But all in all, it's a pretty depressing, overpriced, and blingy Indian there for a tourist crowd.

I've only been here at lunchtime, but I've been seriously impressed. The prices are seriously reasonable at lunch - about £6 for an absolutely huge main - but the dishes are hoooge, packed with flavour, fresh vegetables, good quality tasting meat or tofu.

The service is wildly attentive and the feel and quality of the restaurant is far above the prices they charge. Highly reccommended - I reckon the best place for a lunch in Camden Town.

*UPDATE: Two stars knocked off for a major error: went with a friend who has a peanut allergy, and she specifically questioned peanut content of her dishes when ordering. Despite assurances to the contrary, they then served her a dish containing chopped peanuts. An unbelievable error to make, and I'd seriously reconsider this restaurant if you had a similar allergy.*

Definitely the worst gaybar I've ever visited, probably anywhere in the world. The owners clearly see it as nothing more than a cashcow - it's a heartless gay-by-numbers cavern of soullessness. When we visited on a Friday night, the place was virtually empty, devoid of any atmosphere (blaring cliche camp classics on a shaky soundsystem to somewhow compensate), and there was literally a fat man with a stepladder in the middle of the bar fixing broken lightbulbs. Seriously.

What's amazing about Brighton is all the unique venues, exciting individual spaces, and fun creative people. Charles Street is the exact anthesis of all these things, spare yourself the hell and avoid.

It's a gay bar in an unexpected place - think of KuBar in the pub building of something that used to be a Harvester. It has a little piano area, a smoking outhouse, and a really cold garage that's optimistically styled as a bar, but is really a shed. The main bar area is pretty nicely done and sells a range of bog standard drinks (pricier than they should be for zone 3, IMHO) to a friendly crowd. Age range is pretty broad, mainly guys, and has that slightly parochial feeling over everyone knowing each other well. Intimately in fact.

Note that the location on Google maps is wrong. It's on Pope's Lane but much closer to Ealing South.

Recently refurbed, and so a number of reviews below don't entirely do it justice. No more is it TexMex Burgers and terrifying QPR fans: it's been sympathetically done-up to expose the wood flooring, add some artistically frayed leather sofas, lovely lighting, and an outside smoking area fenced off from the Uxbridge Road madness by some nicely maintained hedging.

The food when we visited was great, if pricey. I ate a roasted squash stuffed with other roast winter veg - my partner's sunday roast chicken was colossal. Really chilled out bar staff and a nice vibe - it could have been a pretentious disaster but it's actually a really pleasant place to hang out.

A really lovely Thai restaurant in Acton/Ealing. The quality (and quantity) of the food is amazing for the price - the curries are really beautiful with a really deep flavour and lots of kick!

Service is so attentive and friendly, the sort of standard you'd expect for £20/main course not £6.50/main course as here!

The place is decked out with eccentric niknaks and with rainbow flags flying - I assume it must be gay owned/run and certainly very gay friendly. Really worth visiting.

It’s one of those Mitchells and Butlers 'unique’ London pubs, with heavy floral wallpaper and fabrics, big statement lampshades, lots of arty handwriting on blackboards, Fruili, and a menu that includes a lot of gourmet burgers and handcut chips.

Having said that it’s a nice atmosphere, it’s clearly cared for by the owner, there are board games if you’re so inclined and a good selection of drinks. The food is better than it used to be, although when we visted yesterday the bread on the vegetarian sharing platter was moudly. Bar staff’s response: 'ooh, sorry about that. Get a shot of vodka or something’. Literally. Hence the star knocked off.

This Virgin Active (technically 'West London’, which is the posh name for 'between Shepherd’s Bush and Acton’) is absolutely brilliant! I’ve been a member for six months now and I’m as happy as I was on day one.

The health club is hoooooge - there are tennis courts, kids club, two studios, 22m pool, spa with a gigantic hydrobath, sauna, sanarium, steam and igloo, Heaven V beauty bit, cafe, and the gym, which is brilliantly equipped. There’s a huge amount of cardio stuff along pleasingly with all the most modern weights and resistance equipment - with two versions of most resistance machines, so you don’t have to wait too long for anything.

Virgin are also quite big on 'exercise innovations’ (which the less kind might call gimmicks) but there’s no less than eight powerplate machines, a TRX thing (presumably to hang yourself on - it looks very odd to me), some wierd bike things attached to a videogame simulator, as well as boxing bits.

It’s got a really good, unthreatening atmosphere, nice changing rooms, generally good staff and it’s very clean. I really would rate it very highly - it’s one of the best Virgin gyms in London, and I reckon they’re the nicest of the bunch by quite some way.