Koh-I-Noor, Glasgow

I recently went to the Koh-i-noor for a celebratory dinner and was exceitedly looking forward to it as it is a well-known Indian restaurant in Glasgow and reputedly one of the original (and best?) in Scotland.

Koh-i-noor is situated just up from Charing Cross on North Street so faces out over the motorway that runs through the centre of the city. Obviously with this start I wasn't expecting fantastic views out of the restaurant windows but unfortunately on walking in I realised that a calm and relaxing interior to contrast with the busy outside was not the theme they had gone for! The positives are that for such a busy location the restaurant is very quiet inside and the tables are mostly in the back where they are far from the street and passing cars. Unfortunately, however, the decor doesn't seem to have been changed since the 1970s and is a harsh clash of different patterns and colours. There were garish and now quite dated and stereotypical pictures of 'Indian lovers' or court scenes-all very colonial. The lights were also quite glaringly bright.

The waiters were very friendly and took orders/served food promptly and efficiently. The downside was that I felt we were constantly having our meal interrupted to be asked if we were enjoying it-4 different waiters asked this during the main course alone. I find this quite intrusive and did wonder if a system where there is one waiter per table would help cut this down as it was obvious they didn't know that we had already been asked 2, 3, 4 times already!

At a table of four we had the pre-theatre menu (available 3-6pm) which offers a selection of starters, mains and an ice cream, gulab jaman or coffee or tea for the grand price of £9.95 per person-this seemed a good deal as we needed to eat early anyway. The selection is good, particularly for a pre-theatre menu with 10-15 starters and mains available which cover the standard pakoras/bajis and different types of curries with 3 'European options' for the mains. For vegetarians there was a choice of Tarka Daal, Saag Aloo or vegetable curry (unspecified!). We ordered a selection of the dishes available.

The starters were quite good, although it is hard to really get pakora that spectacularly wrong. The mushrooms were really quite spicy but I like this and he did ask before I ordered if this was ok. Unfortunately the standard wasn't sustained and the main courses were very average. All of the dishes were warm but not really properly hot and had obviously been reheated from large batches. This in itself isn't terrible if done correctly but when they aren't really heated well through it does make you wonder about the quality. On top of that all of the dishes were extremely oily and the taste was passable at best. The one success was a korma which was a little spicy unusually but our table actually appreciated this. We all had coffee in place of the desserts, which again were fine but nothing special.

Overall my abiding impression of Koh-i-noor is that it was distinctly average. Whilst that may have been influenced by my expectations of it being very high to start with I did feel quite disappointed. This may be one of the first Indian restaurants in Scotland but now there are so many others of a better quality I don't think I'll be rushing back.