Amaya

This is an over priced pretentious restuarant, portions are tiny canapes sized and service is snobby. I have been to many Michelin starred restuarants globally and this makes a mockery of its clientele while rippining them off. Only go if you're not hungary and have too much money.

We should not really give it even 1 star. We made a much anticipated journey for my birthday. After we a consistently good experiences in it's sister restaurant Chutney Mary and it having 1 Michelin rating, we were hoping for an enjoyable experience. Instead we had inadequate service, food was below par and definately not meet expectations. It was expensive for what it offered even taking the location into account. To add to all the toilets were terrible. Money and time down the drain. Do not bother, go somewhere else.

I think overall we found it to be a pleasant experience. We enjoyed the drinks that we had ordered and in particular the monkfish tikka, tofu tikka, chicken wing lollipops, half duck, lamb chops and aubergines. The atmosphere was great very relaxing and felt at home. The staff were very attentive and friendly.

However we did think that some of the dishes we had ordered unfortunately were over powered by some of the spices used. In particular too much cumin was used on the wok fried spinach and the prawns which had completely spoiled the delicate flavours of the spinach and prawns, and the Lamb dori kebab we felt was under spiced. The chicken tikka was again also over spiced with the black pepper corns but the meat was very moist and succulent. We felt that although the service was very good it was not good enough for a Michelin starred restaurant where it should be unquestionably exceptional so this was disappointing. For example it was disappointing that the naan bread was not brought properly in the correct portions and it was some time after that the waiter explained that there was more en-route. Some of the dishes were taking longer than expected but again only later the waiter had decided to tell us this, however on other dishes he did manage our expectations better.

The dessert we had was the Rasmalai and chocolate heaven. The chocolate heaven was fantastic, great chocolate tart and crumbly pastry, exceptional milk chocolate brownie. The Rasmalai was not as good it lacked flavour.

In terms of value for money, we felt it was average and disappointing, We felt that the idea of small portions and sharing although is a novel idea doesn’t really lend itself well to Indian cuisine. If one was being cynical it can be seen as being very commercial given the prices being charged £29.50 for the king prawns for example. We are happy to pay an exceptional price if the food was equally exceptional. Unfortunately we felt overall it did not. We also felt it a bit cheeky to include charitable donations as part of the bill as standard without asking permission. We appreciate the fact that it is optional and could ask the waiter to opt out of this but it really have should been the other way round, where we were allowed to opt in if we wanted to, furthermore we felt that the business should be making this donation themselves and not asking the customer to do so.

Unfortunately and I am sorry (because I am disappointed of myself for having to say this) to say that I would not recommend this restaurant to other people purely because there are other similar restaurants that offer what Amaya does but giving greater value for money.