Mogul India–not quite what we hoped for

We have been to Mogul India before and Nikki went there recently and found it to be quite good. So we decided to do a re-visit before going to the movies one day. The restaurant is located at Verksgaten 9 and it has the same entrance as Piren Pub – not the most upscale pub in town. We did not have a reservation when we went there but they did have a table for us. The rooms are painted in a salmon reddish color that works OK in the restaurant – but in the toilet it is over the top as it is painted in the reddish color and has a pinkish toilet and sink. But enough about interior – we decided to have some vegetable pakora for starter, Nikki went for the lamb rogan josh, I went for a lamb dish (lamb mullaman?)that was recommended by the chef and we wanted it served with raita, pickled vegetables and garlic naan bread. We got a question about how spicy we wanted the found and we went for medium +. It is always difficult to answer this as most Indian restaurants has a tendency to make the dishes a lot milder to fit the Norwegian palate. But we do like it a bit spicy and that is why we went for medium to spicy. We first got a mint sauce and some chopped up chili/garlic(?) and a poppadum, and we soon also got the vegetable pakora which was pretty tasty. We soon got our main dishes served as well in little bowls with a small candle underneath to keep it warm.
My first impression of my dish was that it was tasty but a bit on the salty side, not spicy at all and not sizzling warm. Nikki had the same comment about her dish when it comes to the dish not being spicy and not being warm enough. My dish had lots of chunks of lamb in it so the portions were generous for us – but Nikki’s portion had not that many pieces of lamb but quite a lot of sauce and the sauce was a lot less rich compared to what I have experienced before in rogan josh dishes. The garlic naan bread was good and Nikki seemed to enjoy her pickled vegetables. We had almost forgotten about the raita when a waiter came to the table to serve it and by that time we were almost done with our meal.
So all in all I would say that this was an average meal. The portions were good but the taste of the dishes that we had did not blow us away in an way. It was also a bit of a letdown to have the food served a bit on the lukewarm side and having raita served way too late. We will go there again in the future but there are room for improvement. And one last word of advice – I know this is an Indian restaurant run by Indians but you have to get someone to spell check the Norwegian menu. It is full of mistakes and it doesn’t make a good first impression. Our food came to about 600 Norwegian kroner (about 110 USD). You can read more about the restaurant on http://www.indiamogul.com/
Regards
Gard
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