Aladin

If you havent dined in at Aladin, then you should! One of the best curries ive ever had! Murugh aloo rezella, kebabish jalfrezis and the nans are just toooo good.

I came to Aladin with a friend visiting London who really wanted some Indian food on Brick Lane. We went online and checked out places and their reviews and this establishment stood out. I have to admit, I’m not a big fan of Indian cuisine, but I did have a very pleasant meal here. We were seated immediately and had some tap water to start. I had the chicken tikka masala and it was really rich and filling, along with some garlic nomm, which was perfect for dipping in the sauce. We also ordered rice on the side (one serving is more than enough to share between two people!). What I also liked about this place is that unlike most restaurants on Brick Lane, the staff isn’t out on the street hustling you to try their food. That was really refreshing. I’ll remember that plus the really rich meal I’ve had next time a friend wants some Indian food on Brick Lane!

Food was good, service was pitiful. The servers were totally rude when it came time for us to leave. Really ended our night with a sour note. Won’t be back.

I was a little disappointed by this place. It was voted best balti house in London this past year, so I was so looking forward to eating at this place when I visited. The flavors were fair but I think I ordered wrong. I got hariyali chicken, which I’ve had at Indian/​Nepali places in the states and it’s quiet good. My dish came out an unappetizing Christmas green, found no where in nature. The flavor was good but very sweet, and it was so rich that I was only able to eat a small portion of the dish. The chicken, when extracted from the sauce was cooked tandoori style and tasted much better than the sauce. I might try something else here in the future, but I would try or recommend the hariyali.

Food is not so good here and the portions are small. It also takes forever, so don’t come if you’re in a hurry. Everything we ordered was sweet for some reason — even the chicken tikka masala and saag paneer! They’ll give you a 20% off deal and no corkage BYOB but I’m not sure I’d come back even with those perks. I’d rather spend a little more for better food.

I visited Aladin as part of a food walking tour. We tried three different types of curry along with some naan bread. The service was decent at best and the curry was pretty good. The atmosphere was just alright. Honestly, I feel you can probably get better curry in other places in London, especially with such a large curry choices.
Brick lane is a fun place to go. It is a complete mix of shops, curry houses, churches, jewish quarter, art industry, etc. You can find so much on or around this road that it makes it a fun place to spend the afternoon. I would recommend getting curry or Indian food on this strip, but not necessarily here.

Absolutely disappointing. The palak paneer was sweet?! I used to frequent the place ages ago and just visited. Had many fond memories of post pub curries with friends. The shambolic cooking was heart breaking. Never again. Especially embarrassing as I had talked it up to my companions.

Cloyingly sweet food in a place whose dirty carpets should have served as a warning. My wife’s chicken dish had this sweet green sauce redolent of pumpkin pie spices. Now my stomach hurts and I desperately need a pallet cleanser.

So bad. I’m not even sure why I am giving the extra star. Probably because it’s a food review and I love food… But this was nothing beyond decent. Came here with a large group very excited to try apparently an award winning restaurant. We waited about 30 mins to order and didn’t receive our food til an hour later!
The service was horrible as I see almost all the other reviews also mentioned… Not just slow, but extremely rude. Thinking our food was going to be good we stuck around but with the fact we were starving and it only tasted decent kinda means it’s not great at all. Won’t be back. Maybe even wait outside if friends want to go!

I went looking for heat, and boy did I find it.
Being a white American guy visiting Indian restaurants in England typically means getting served mild food, no matter what you order. I arrived at Aladin with my heart set on the («exceptionally spicy» according to their online menu) Lamb Tikka Phall, and that’s exactly what I ordered. Unfortunately, the wait staff attempted to talk me out of it, and it took my raising my voice before they would take my order.
The dish itself was as expected — fiery and flavorful, although not particularly complex or deep in those flavors. I sweated buckets as I knew I would, and was brought extra napkins to wipe up that sweat without my needing to ask.
I would have given three stars instead of four, but compared to the three other places around London where I’ve tried to get a decent curry this week and have been completely let down, these guys rose high above. Not that this was particularly difficult to do…

Poped into that nicely quiet place on our way back from Brick Lane.
To be fair, neither of us expected the food to be that great for such a reasonable price. A Chicken curry, one big Chef’s specialty: chicken marinated in a creamy minty spinach sauce, plain nan bread, some mushroom pilau rice & two juices for less than £30.
As much as the food deserves 5 stars, the service do not even deserves one.
The only available waiter was absolutely not helpful: my coat was still unbutton that I’ve been asked on & on for a starter or a thing to share. Then we had to signal him a few time to pass the order or even to pay the bill. The waiter was just to busy talking with a mate on the opposite side of the room.
But, let’s be grown ups here.
The food is really great and I will definitely go back there again, and guys, give them a chance ;)

I have so much to say about this little strip of Brick Lane! I’ve had good and bad, but, well, on to the deets!
Aladin is in the middle of a cluster of Indian/​Bangladeshi restaurants. Apparently, this is Prince Charles’ favourite. Apparently, Ainsley Harriot loves this restaurant the most (me: really? The chef with the massive hands? server: yes! Him!). Apparently, Aladin has won the «best curry 2014» award. I don’t know if any of this is accurate. But, well, *I* like it, so that counts for something, right?
The reality of Brick Lane is that it’s a bit of a gong show, but it’s what I like… it’s not the best Indian food I’ve had in London (this feels like treason to commit to type) but it’s the best whole dang experience I’ve had.
It starts when you’re out on the street and reps from each of the restaurants come up and try to coax you towards their place. The «deals» they offer are usually in the range of «20% off!» or «I’ll give you X combo deal!» or «rice and naan for free!». Most recently we snagged the «starter, main, rice or naan for 12 pounds» «deal». I write deal in quotes not because it wasn’t a good food/​money investment, but because I think it’s a pretty standard offer at the restaurant; it’s not like we really negotiated hard. Sidebar, though: especially if you’re in a larger group you can finagle some good «group deals».
So, inside it’s pretty loud, and busy, and hot. I’m pretty sure Prince Charles has never hung out on the uncomfortable faux velvet banquette. Bollywood music pipes in, and you can barely hear it. Many servers wear Britney Spears-​esque headsets. It’s all kind of frenetic, but I find service super polite and attentive.
We ate some lamb kebabs, and bhajis to start (bhajis are just alright here; I think the spicing could be kicked up), but the real star were the mains. Lamb rogan josh was FABOOSH as was a coconut chicken curry with just the right amount of heat. Naan were hot and fluffy, and our freebie drinks — mango juice and a flat (wah!) Diet Coke — were totally fine (less so if we had had to pay for them, but a-​ok given that they were part of the «freebies» thrown in).
On the topic of hydration…
IMPORTANT note, booze hounds of Londontown! It’s BYOB. No corkage fee. There’s some funny deal with an off-​license several doors down, where if you show a certain business card you get 20% off your wine. Honestly, it all felt very cloak-​and-​dagger to me but it also added to the charm of the whole meal. By the time I made it back to Aladin with my bottle, wine glasses had been set out and a server whisked my pinot out of my hands to give a v generous pour. Ai’ght. GAME ON.
Also, another thing I appreciate about Aladin: it’s busy, and it’s crowded, but I never feel rushed. We hung out post-​meal polishing up the wine and never were hassled to speed it up. Bill came, hot towels to wash hands, square of orange chocolate… not too bad at all.
Unilocal note: I can corroborate other reviewers’ comments about trying to push extra items /​bring items to the table that you never ordered. Watch out for the popadum, guys! It comes to the table as an «assumed» order, and it’s only when you get your final bill that you realize 1.50 GBP per person has been added to the tally. This is ok by me — I would have ordered them regardless, and the price is good — but the practice itself is shady and presumptuous.

Food is at best average.
No alcohol licence = no beer!
The worst part is the service, overly aggressive Bangladeshi men with absolutely no idea of customer service trying to make money by bringing you items you never order. Had the impression that thought we were tourist, when we are not.
I cannot recommend this restaurant,

Came here with a big group a while back. I actually really enjoyed this lamb curry that I had (I don’t remember what it was — it was a ‘chef special’).
The pros:
— They take large group reservations and gave us a discount off the total bill for booking in advance
— Massive menu, reasonable prices, and food was good
— BYOB, no corkage fees
The cons:
— Service was the biggest issue. For a group of 10 people, they should have blocked out at LEAST an hour and a half. We were rushed out of there in less than one hour. Towards the end they were hassling us and telling us that they needed the table, before people were even finished eating. This is an unacceptable way to manage a restaurant.
— They tried to pull a fast one on us re: the group booking discount. We looked at the bill at the end and it wasn’t there, and we had to flag down the waiter and ask them for it. What?!? Did they think we were not going to notice? I thought this was a very skeevy move.
— They only take one or two credit cards per bill. Come on guys… this isn’t technological limitation, everyone knows how those portable card machines work. This is laziness.
I wish I could give this place more stars because the food was really quite good. The horrendous service killed our experience.

I quite like the food here, but then again, I’m no expert on Bangladeshi cuisine. But come here in a group, especially mid-​week, and you can haggle an absolute *bargain*. The staff are all really friendly and remember my name, though you have to make sure they don’t slip in anything like Poppadums onto the table when you’ve not Negotiated for them to be included. But for what you can get for 10 pounds, and how long you can sit around and chat afterwards for (especially with my habit of arriving at 10pm), this’ll always be a useful little place for me.

Jeez Us. Bricklane is Little Bangladesh … and man is the food great. There must be 50 Bangladeshie restaurants in 3 – 4 blocks. All of which say they have the best curries.
Well Aladin has amazing curries. From mild, medium and hot… all were very flavorful. The meat was not cheap. The chicken was really tasty. The lamb was not fatty. Their naan was warm light and buttery… perfect for sopping up all the tasty curry sauce.
The service was spot on. The restaurant is clean. The setting is nice.
What more can one ask???

I really don’t understand the good reviews here.
Main dishes literally were gritty with sugar, slow service, they’re constantly trying to upsell, ‘bati’ versions are same as standard versions of dishes but cost 20% more. I could continue, but you get the point.
We went to Sainsbury’s right after to try their chicken tikka masala to make sure Brits don’t just like their Indian food sugary, and thankfully that hypothesis was proven wrong. Sainsbury’s chicken tikka masala isn’t good by any means, but it’s leagues better (and cheaper) than the sugary slop at Aladdin.

This was the second restaurant that I’ve tried on Brick Lane, and I would say the quality of the food was on par with the first.
I ordered a mix of Chicken and Lamb Mardas with Garlic Rice. It was exactly what I was looking for in a south Asian dish. It was fairly hot as it stated on the menu. The madras curry sauce was excellent with the rice.
The service was attentive, but the waiter was a bit pushy and quite unhelpful when I was ordering.

The majority of the food here is very good and since everyone below has told you what to order I will keep it brief.
Here is the one thing you should know if you are planning on eating here and are form someplace other than the UK… As a rule, they put SUGAR in the Chicken Tikka Masala in the UK. Not a little, a lot. Enough that the dish tastes sweet. So, if you don’t like sugar in your curry, do not order it. Oh, the saag paneer has sugar in it too.
There, now go eat at Aladdin, people are nice and the food is good.

Prince Charles supposedly loves this place (or did in 1989), which was good enough for me, my boyfriend, my aunt, and uncle when wandering down Brick Lane trying to figure out how on earth to pick a place to have lunch. It’s an incredibly fun street, with delicious smells coming from everywhere and tons of awesome little shops. Had zero idea where to go so we figured if Aladin was good enough for Prince Charles, it was good enough for us.
And it certainly was «good enough,» but I suspect not nearly as good as other places we could’ve gone to on Brick Lane. They have a big, almost overwhelming menu, which we perused sitting at a windowside table. It was a mild, sunny day, so the windows were open which was really nice.
I tasted my aunt’s chicken biryani which looked lovely and colorful but tasted a bit flat. My dish didn’t even come close to wowing me — Balti Chicken Dansak, it was — and I thought the spices were pretty… I don’t know, poorly blended? Harsh? Just didn’t have the synchronicity of a really wonderful Indian curry where everything tastes harmonious. Try somewhere else on the Lane!

Un excellent Indien de BrickLane, visité par le Prince Charles himselfCarte généreuse et plats parfaitement exécutés, pour des tarifs très raisonnables. Un must londonien !
(Et encore une fois, rien à voir avec les Indiens made in France, souvent décevant)

On m’avait dit que tester au moins un restaurant indien à Brick Lane valait largement le coup. En effet, il s’agit d’une rue bordée essentiellement de restos indiens, avec des magasins de fripes tout au bout. Le soir, quand on passé, on se fait haranguer par des employés qui nous proposent l’offre du siècle! Moins 25%, boissons sur le compte de la maison, etc… Mais né vous y fiez pas, c’est du pareil au même.
J’ai choisi «Aladin» car il était recommandé par mon guide. £7 le menu entrée-​plat (supplément de £1.50 pour tout ce qui contient poisson ou crevette) avec boisson incluse, ça reste très bon marché.
Le restaurant, dans les tons oranges, était rempli de très bruyants joueurs de foot (une trentaine), prêts à monter sur la table. On a donc demander à être déplacés au sous-​sol. La cuisine est plutôt bonne. On a testé les galettes d’oignon frits («onion bahji») et le poisson frit en entrée: très bon. Le tikka masala spécial était bien savoureux, avec une sauce riche (attention les kilos!). Rien à redire non plus sur le lassi à la mangue, délicieux. J’aurais aimé manger aussi bien, dans un coin plus calme.