The Sitar Indian Restaurant

Good food here. Terrible service, like «did we order yet, because it’s been so long that I’ve forgotten if we did or not.»

We visited Sitar after a westend show and had à perfect tasty dinner, close to perfection. Great place!

I enjoyed this food so much! Spicy! Chicken was cooked well and not dry. I’m giving them only 3 stars because when I checked in and got my «free glass of wine» he said, «red or white?»… Lol really? I can’t pick from the 6 you have available by the glass?
Also, spicy asparagus on the menu but not available. I was looking forward to it :(oh well… Nice people.

Entering an unknown curry house in London is like rolling the dice. While this city has many good South Asian restaurants, it also has many curry houses that simply fall short of the mark. So when a friend from out of town wanted curry before an evening at Gordons Wine Bar and we only had an hour before we were set to meet other friends, I was unsure where to head — the line at Dishoom was too long. Most of the other places within a 10 minute walk had 3 star ratings on Unilocal.Bleh. So with the help of Google Maps, we headed up the Strand and decided to try Sitar, and I’m happy to say it exceeded expectations. The space is kind of small and simply decorated. It’s the kind of place that is perfect for a pre-​party fortification session with a small group — given the size of the dining room, I probably wouldn’t go with more than 4 or 6 people. The food itself was delicious. I went for Bengali-​style crab curry, and the guys got lamb jalfrezi and lamb balti, and we had some garlic naan and okra on the side. All had lots of fragrant spices and the curries were actually different from one another (sometimes bad curry houses will just pretty much use the same sauce on everything, but add some onions to some dishes, when in fact these dishes each have their own ingredients and methods that are different from one another when made properly).
Surprisingly, these guys have a pretty good wine list with selections from all over the world — mostly large producers, but way above average for a London curry house. We went for a Sebastiani Zinfandel from California because our Portuguese friend said he’d never heard that Americans can make good wine. By the end of dinner, he conceded that yes, indeed, Americans can make good wine.
Prices were very reasonable for the neighborhood and for what we had. In all, probably not worth trekking from afar, but a very good choice if you are in the area.

This was our last day in London and we had been looking forward to «local» Indian food our whole trip but due to schedules and other issues it had not happened. This place DELIVERED. We found it in Rick Steves guidebook and he was right. The food was excellent and the service was great. It is not «budget» priced but well worth the money.

… indische Küche vom Feinsten! Ein Besuch lohnt sich.