Farzi Café London

When I recently put a story up on Instagram asking where everyone’s favourite country to visit for food was, to no surprise the most popular option was Dubai. And to be honest, it probably is for me too. All of the stuff you can’t eat in the UK like Five Guys is Halal, and they just have the best desserts to eat.

I feel like we’re seeing a steady trend of restaurants coming to London from abroad, whether it be P F Chang’s who opened a restaurant a little over a years back in Leicester Square, or Eggspectation who promise to open a restaurant in London soon!

Another restaurant on this list is Farzi Café who officially opened their doors to the public in 2019 with a restaurant based a 5-min walk from Charing Cross station. Their Dubai restaurant is known for smoke, wacky decorations hanging off the ceiling and having your bill served on a typewriter, so no doubt the London restaurant had high expectations to live up to.

Me and two friends decided at 5pm on a Friday to go for dinner, and Farzi happened to have one table left at 5:45pm so we took the table. Three days after opening and they were already fully booked for the rest of the evening – pretty impressive by anyones standards!

My immediate impression upon entering: the restaurant is truly stunning. With golden leaves at the entrance hanging all the way to the lower-ground floor, and solid golden decor throughout the restaurant, it’s no doubt that a lot of investment has gone into making this restaurant stand out. I read an article a few months before the opening that they had already forked £4m into the restaurant!

The restaurant is based on two floors – the main floor that you enter into is quite well-lit, with a large bar area (as expected, Alcohol is served), however the lower ground floor is set in quite low light. Meaning I had to ask to be moved to a table with better lighting (if I was to have any luck with doing a review post!).

We sat down and were presented with three menus – a drinks menu, another drinks menu, and then a large food menu. The food menu is extensive, too extensive in my opinion with too many sub-sections. It starts with ‘Nano plates’, moves onto ‘Small plates’ and Pao/sliders.. then you have your middle section which is the ‘Roasts & Grills’, the ‘#Farzified British Classics’, the ‘Mains’ section, ‘Biryanis’ and not forgetting your ‘Sides’. After about 10 minutes of getting suggestions from the super-helpful and patient waiter (and looking on Instagram to see what looks most photogenic) we managed to order 12 dishes from different sections of the menu to get a good feel of what the restaurant has to offer.

From the Nano plates, we went for the Pani Puri, the Paneer Popcorn and the Avocado Chaat.

The Pani Poori was pretty expensive, considering you can get like 6 for £2 in Southall. But of course, you’re in a fancy fine-dining restaurant; so you have to pay the price. Served with three small jugs of sauces (Imli, Chilli and couldn’t quite decide what the third was), and 4 Poori shells for a fiver. Lovely start to the meal, I like how the shells didn’t come pre-poured like they do in most restaurants I’ve visited – a great ice-breaker to begin the meal with.

Now I’m a HUGE Chaat fan which means I’m extremely picky, but I was pretty impressed with what Farzi have created. It’s served in half of an Avocado peel and the actual Chaat also contains chopped up Avocado – not something I’ve seen done before; but I thought it really worked! Definitely not the best Chaat i’ve tried, I think Hankies Cafe’s one was better in my opinion, but a great-tasting dish, and one I’d recommend getting.

The Paneer comes in a pretty generous portion, considering it only costs £4 and we didn’t manage to finish the portion until the end of the meal. Harder shell to the paneer than I was expecting, but it gave it a chewier-finish which I thought worked.

Next up was the ‘Small plates’, from which we ordered the Dal Chawal Arancini and the Pan Tossed Shrooms. The Dal Chawal Arancini was one of my favourite dishes of the night – there were 3 of us, so we only got to have one each, but what impressed me was that I expected the lentil and rice combination to give a dry-taste to the dish, but I was very wrong. The tomato base and the two sauces on top added a great moist finish, and I was left wanting another portion (all to myself this time).

Now in case you’re wondering why everything I’ve mentioned so far has been a veg-dish – I was eating with a vegetarian. But this wasn’t a problem at all, as the vegetarian dishes were as impressive as I was hoping the meat ones would be. Next up was the Pan Tossed Shrooms which we ordered upon the waiters recommendation. Different types of mushrooms cooked in a creamy saucy – absolutely delicious.

For our mains, I wasn’t prepared to have any more vegetables (sorry bro if you’re reading this), so we found anything and everything that contained meat and ordered it! We started with the “C.T Masala and Naan” which came served with a Naan about the size of the palm of my hand. The dish itself was very tasty, rich flavours, generous serving of Chicken and enough to feed 2/3 people, however I found the size of the Naan to be very cheeky. You’d definitely need another normal-sized Naan to finish this dish, so do bare that in mind if you’re ordering.

Next up was my actual favourite dish of the night (closely followed by the Daal Chawal Arancini). The Shawarma Biryani was certainly no cheap eat at £17, but the presentation I thought was super impressive, and the meat tasted great. There was a fair bit of fat left on the meat which really gave it a great flavour, but yeah I must admit I think the presentation is what took this to the no.1 spot in my eyes. Biryani also tasted authentic desi-style, with no compromise in flavour for a British taste. In the background is the Scotch Eggs which I didn’t get a better picture of as my friend had already started attacking them once I had finished with the picture below *sigh*. Not a dish I’ve tried before, but it tasted great, and I’m sure no doubt other restaurants will start to serve this now too! The boiled egg was soft inside, and the minced meat had a rich flavour.

Dessert: I wasn’t massively impressed with. We ordered the Rasmalai and the Coconut Ladoo (both priced at £7 each). The Coconut Ladoo wasn’t too bad, considering I had paid around the same price for another Coconut dessert earlier in the week (from Patara on Regents Street) which I really didn’t enjoy. A coconut flavoured shell with berry syrup inside. A sharp but short burst of flavour, over in 2 bites. However, the Rasmalai wasn’t to my taste – I’d much rather get the version from Ambala which costs about half the price. But, it was the only dish that reminded me of my visit to Dubai, with the waiter pouring hot sauce over the dessert for us.

Other than this, there wasn’t much of a Dubai-style feel to the restaurant, which I don’t necessarily feel is a bad thing. However, I must admit that I am an absolute sucker for theatricality, so was hoping for more on that side. BUT given I visited on like the third day after the restaurants official launch, I’m sure they have more tricks up their sleeve which they’ll later reveal.

Is it Halal? Everything other than Pork, yes. The waiter also confirmed that they ensure no cross-contamination between the Halal meat and the Pork.

Price-wise – the total bill (after a 12.5% service charge) came to £140, so just under £50 per person (table of 3). Definitely not a cheap-eat, but it’s a restaurant I’d classify more as a fine-dine rather than a casual bite, so a spot I’d recommend firstly just to try out (since it’s new!), but personally I’d probably only suggest returning for a special occasion.

Drinks: as mentioned earlier, two drinks menus were presented to us – and being in London, to no surprise the majority of them were Alcohol-based. However, the waiter mentioned that they’re happy to create a drink based on what you fancy, so we ordered one drink from their menu (the Vata) and asked for a mocktail made with Mango and Passion Fruit. The mocktail was really good, but the Vata drink which I tried wasn’t really to my taste. For £7, it was served in a tiny glass, most of which was filled with ice cubes, but even the few sips that I did have – I wasn’t overly impressed.

Aside from the food – the staff were amazing. Everyone from the gentleman opening the door for everyone coming in/out, to the staff who took me to my seat, to the waiter who knew the menu inside out. They really made the visit special and enjoyable, and went out of their way to cater for us.