Nawab Restaurant (Levenshulme, Manchester) review by Mohibur Rahman

Friends arranged a party to celebrate my homecoming (!?) last night. It was at the old, typical, crowded Nawab. After spending the whole day out eating lots of junk food, Nawab’s food was going to be a bit heavy, but we decided to go there one last time for old time sake. Our in house food expert the honourable Mr Mohibur Rahman was asked to give his kind input in the review of the Nawab’s food. He agreed. So here’s the damage below.

At first, I must advice that Mohib is a very difficult person to please to, especially when it comes to food. With a sharp sense of taste in food and ability to criticise to the extreme he is every chef’s nightmare. So anyone associated with Nawab restaurant reading this review please don’t be too upset.

Let’s start with the starters. After waiting for 20 minutes to be seated on a busy bank holiday weekend, Mohib discovered Nawab still offers extensive range of starters just like the old time. There were various salad bowls. There had been a few changes in the salad bowls leaving out the traditional Asian salad dishes.
But they did increase the salad dishes nevertheless.

The chicken wings were greasy, but the shami kababs were quite tasty, although my friend Amir thought “Shami Kababs were too Shamee”.
“The Seek kabab wasn’t solid or liquid”, Amir commented afterwards.
Fish Tikka was quite tender and chunky. No lamb chops were available.

Mohib was really disappointed with the main course dishes. Karahi Gosht was slightly bitter therefore, awful. Chicken Balti was nice with rich flavour unlike the chicken and Lamb Balti which were dull. Chicken Jalfrezi had nothing to shout about it. Vegeterian options were really limited for my vegetarian friend Keano’s liking. Quality of the vegetarian dishes weren’t good either.

Plain rice, pilau rice and pizza were okay but naan was rubbery and cold.

Mohib felt all the curries were tailored towards the traditional English taste rather than Asian taste.

Nawab doesn’t offer as much dessert as I would’ve liked. I have seen more dessert in Dhaka restaurants. Anyway I thought fruit salad could’ve improved their menu for dessert. The chocolate cake was near perfect but the cheese cake was frozen. Icecreams were out for too long therefore turned into milkshake before they made it to the mouth.

Overall, it was a good experience. The restaurant was extremely crowded but it was a good fun nevertheless. Amir was disappointed as he didn’t see anyone pleasing to eyes. It was surprising to see that Nawab still doesn’t offer any special dish yet.

Plates and cutleries weren’t cleaned to the standard. Initially waiters were welcoming but weren’t so responsive afterwards.

The food quality of the Nawab has certainly gone down since I first went there few years ago, but still a good hangout for average quality Asian food.