The Avenue

The service was absolutely amazing! The staff are very polite and welcoming. Food was very nice and tasted great, a lot of flavour. They have a wide variety of excellent beverages. Their service is just incredible all the time, this is why I am now a regular customer and I certainly recommend this restaurant to all my friends and family. The avenue does get busy, especially on weekends so it's better to make reservations first, as i always do. Overall, I always have a lovely experience, with wonderful meals and have made great friends with many different people. Definitely a pleaser.

We went last night and were not very impressed. It's clearly a very popular place, packed out on a Saturday night. The service was polite but impersonal. For starters we had the onion badji, which was very good, and a king prawn butterfly, which was huge but tasteless. Mains were not good. He had the chicken korai, which is usually a sizzling dish of vegetables and meat, not too saucy, but this was just chicken and veg in a mush, served in a korai dish but not a korai style. When we complained, it was removed and then brough back a few minutes later, heated up more! Possibly just a misunderstanding, the waiter spoke little English. My vege korai was the same mush, just less the chicken. The food came out very fast (too fast) so I think they just have one big pot of it and don't make to order, just toss the appropriate meat into the vege base. Saag paneer was weird, seemed to be made with melted cheddar rather than paneer, which I have seen before but never in London, where the quality of Indian restaurants is usually a bit better. Chick peas ok (if a bit bland), but how can you get that wrong? Overall, the food was bland and not well spiced. I felt that we were being rushed through as quick as they could, so we didn't bother with desserts, which were just the usual brought-in ones. They do have a good wine list, although it only lists styles and not the actual wines, we had a nice sancerre for £16.95 which I thought was reasonable value. But overall this restaurant is mediocre, and I wouldn't bother going back. The Purbani (across the road) is better on both food and service.