Warwick
CV34 4EW
www.aqua-food-mood.co.uk
This was my first visit to Warwick and i found that most of the decent sounding restaurants were quite pricey so when i read that there was a Lebanese restaurant in the town which sounded fairly reasonable i decided to give it a go. Also i am a very big fan of Lebanese and mezze food so i was quite excited about the prospect of eating here.
When we arrived at the restaurant on a Saturday night to see there was only one table of people in there we were a little hesitant as i like there to be a bit of an atmosphere. Once we were seated it didn't take long before the restaurant began to fill up, which made me relax more.
The choice of starters on the menu was fairly long with a good range of hot and cold dishes on offer. Not wanting to fill up to much before our main meals, we ordered a starter of mixed dips and bread. Consisting of humous, broad bean dip and baba ganoush.
When it arrived it seemed quite small, i did think they could have been a bit more generous with the portion sizes of each dip. However, the humous was very good, nice and thick and rich. The baba ganoush was also very nice and had a great smokey flavour and the bread was very nice and fresh tasting. The disappointment came with the supposed broad bean dip, with no broad beans in sight just a few borlotti beans in a murky looking brown sauce which tasted like it had come out of a tin.
On to the mains, we ordered whole grilled baby chicken with garlic sauce, and a lamb and okra stew. The dishes looked very appetizing on arrival and were decently sized. The chicken tasted very good and was grilled very well so it had that lovely charred bbq taste. However, the supposed garlic sauce was just a small ramekin of what resembled garlic mayonaise. It came with rice and a small salad, although the rice didn't have that nice buttery texture that i would expect, it was just plain boiled basmati rice with a few herbs sprinkled on.
The lamb and okra stew was quite an average dish, the lamb was a bit chewy and the sauce tasted quite acidic, and didn't have a rich enough taste of the tomato. I think this was probably because it hadn't been cooked for long enough to get that rich slow cooked taste.
The meal came to £34 including service. All in all this was a fairly decent place, and for somewhere small like Warwick i am sure it offers a refreshing change to chain restaurants and overpriced gastropubs. However it just didn't quite excel in the kitchen enough to make me want to go back.