Cinnamon Kitchen

Our "curry club", a fluctuating but lovely group of uni friends and others, has now racked up quite a good number of visits to various Indian restaurants in London. In celebration of one of our number's sadly brief visit to the UK from Argentina we went last night to The Cinnamon Kitchen by Liverpool Street, an off-shoot of The Cinnamon Club in Westminster, which I have been to twice and loved.

The food at Cinnamon Kitchen was delicious but the staff were weirdly stressy. I have never been to a restaurant where the staff stressed so much. Firstly making the booking my Visa details were taken and I was told there would be a £20 charge per person (!) if we cancelled without giving 24 hours notice; at the same time I was told I must inform in advance if the number of people attending was to go up or down. Maybe this is common practice but I've never had it happen before.

Then when we got there one lady got in an incomprehensible stress about whether we were going to use the A La Carte or Specials menu, as I hadn't specified when booking (hadn't been asked!). There were confusing instructions about being sure to inform the waiter which we were ordering from (the specials menu was exactly the same as the a la carte but with fewer dishes). Then someone else came along (while there were still only two of us there) to inform us that "what I will do for you is I will give you some of all the starters so you can share them." Now this would be quite nice if it was an option but it was presented as a fait accompli. ArgentinaGirl had the presence of mind to ask how much this would be and it turned out it would be more than each ordering a separate starter, weirdly.

On the up side though there was one lovely waiter who was very helpful with dietary requirements and putting orders in before everyone arrived. And as I say the food was delicious - I had fat chillis with spiced paneer and tilapia curry. I would have had dessert, there was something chocolatey that looked nice, but I didn't as noone else was and I didn't want to look like a greedy guts. Thanks goodness for that restraint, as it was I spent half the night in heart burn city due to the foolishness of eating spicy food at 35 weeks pregnant. HackneyChild decided to throw a massive tantrum at 12.45am as well and decided he would only go back to sleep if I came into his bedroom not Daddy. His best comment was "I don't like my bed! You must get me another bed!"