SK Chaat House

This restaurant used to be coveted as one of the best Indian chaat houses in London — well at least it was in my books. I used to frequent this place with my family pretty often. The staff were very friendly and the food was as authentic as you could get compared to similar food found in parts of India. Imagine the shock when we turned up here today, after a relatively long break of 3 – 4 months, and discovered that the name had changed from SK Chaat House to SK Express. The place has a new layout, new menu and is under new management. The old owner, Uncle Manu, as we knew him, is still running the catering business, but he was unable to run that and the restaurant at the same time, and so he’s handed over the restaurant to new management.
Such a shame, because the new owners are, frankly, useless. The menu now includes north Indian, south Indian, IndoChinese and Chaats. We ordered our usual bhel puri, and also went for an IndoChinese dish called paneer schezwan and aloo parata. The bhel puri arrived first. It looked «hmmm, interesting» and certainly different to what I was used to seeing. The first impression of the bhel puri, without even tasting it, was that it looked anaemic. The taste was also very different to what I was expecting. It lacked sweetness and the was over dressed, making it extremely hot and quite soggy. Next came the IndoChinese dish called paneer schezwan. It was, to be frank with you, a pile of bile. Chunks of paneer, fried in loads of oil, too much chilli powder and a disgustingly over sweet sauce. The dish neither tasted of anything Indian or Chinese I’ve ever eaten in my life. What a major disaster dish! The aloo parata came out with the paneer and was surprisingly decent. If it wasn’t for the parata, the paneer would not have been edible. The parata at least did something to temper the overtly sweet paneer.
The total came to £9.70, they accepted debit card and certainly got no tip from me. The service was lax, the staff never bothered to ask us how our food was or if we needed anything else and they were not the usual friendly types we were used to. Sadly, I doubt they’ll ever get anymore business from me either. An otherwise superb restaurant is sadly now the exact opposite of superb. I would not recommend this place to anyone, even if you were desperately starving. Go next door to Sakoni’s and get a decent meal instead.