Sahara Restaurant

I wish I could agree with curlynewf as her review was pretty inspiring and made me want to discover the place, unfortunately my experience was vastly different :(

We organised a dinner amongst a large group of North africans and this review is representative of the unanimous view shared that evening: the quality of the food really wasn't all that special. The soup we had for starters tasted burnt (the response we'd been given was that we were late (which we were) and that it had been reheated for us, hence the result - I'll leave it to the reader to make their own mind up on whether that's a reasonable explanation. I had my views!). The couscous which came at a hefty average price of £12 was of standard quality at best, whilst its presentation left much to be desired (to give you an idea, a good couscous at a typical north african restaurant should cost no more than £7). We only sampled those two meals to keep the logistics simple so I am not able to comment on any other dishes. I would have expected the bill not to include the soup starters or at least give us a discount given every single person on the table complained of the same thing, but that wasn't suggested by the owners (big no no on that one.. this is a very good example of how one can lose customers for life).

The 2 restaurant staff who provided the service that evening were friendly (they were probably also the managers), which slightly alleviated the poor culinary experience, but that's about all I can say about the place unfortunately. It's pretty small so feels intimate although something was really missing in the atmosphere. It felt dreary and in need of an injection of joie de vivre.

I really don't like writing negative reviews but I wanted to balance out curlynewf's review as our experience was unfortunately very different :(