Food: Mint Leaf

Sometimes it's tough being of subcontinent origin. Amongst the many challenges we face, trying to remain objective and impartial when visiting an Indian restaurant ranks up there with all the worst.

Take Mint Leaf for instance. It would be easy for me to poo poo the place as a typical posh-but-not-really Indian place designed to extract as much money from an expensed City dinner as possible, resulting in a low quality high price experience which is very easy to forget... but instead I'll spend some time explaining exactly why this place sucks so bad.

First of all it was too hot. As in the place. Maybe the air conditioning wasn't working or maybe we were all just having so much fun (not really) but the place was quite uncomfortable at times. The drinks were expensive and boring, mainly consisting of heavily sugared water that didn't really hit any spots. The food was okay I suppose, with the tandoori broccoli something I'd never had before. The daal and paneer were above average, the lamb and prawns not as much. The amount of food was pretty stingy - we had to do the unforgivable and ask for more which tested the service (which was also passable).

But the real nail in the coffin was the price. At £55 per head (excluding drinks) I'm hard pressed to think of any other meal I've ever had that was of such poor value. It was enough to put me off ever going back, even if the bill was being covered. There really is no need for a place like this in London anymore.