Zouks Restaurant (Chester Street (off Oxford Rd), Manchester, M1 5QS)

Zouks is a place where they will either get it very right or they will get it very very wrong. Like being triple teamed in a Free For all Match :/

A group of friends and I visited Zouks for a meal as a pre-game thing. First impressions were good, the decor was nice and contemporary and strangely with an open kitchen running the length of the restaurant. If we werent sure about how good the place was before then the sheer number of people coming in through the doors seemed a testament to its success.

To start we had ordered some onion bhajis, lightly coated in gram flour and deep-fried. They were nothing short of mouth watering delicious. We also had some Keema Samosa which were fair but a bit plain for my tastebuds. Next up was the main meal; we had ordered chicken tikka masala, grilled and then marinated in a beautiful sauce with fresh coriander, green chillies and ginger, an incredibly tender lamb pasanda, a very gingery chicken handi, pilau rice, palak paneer and bindi, (starts to drool) both were excellent. The Mango lassi was also brilliant and very refreshing which is something alot of places don't do very well. I especially liked their Peshwari naan, it tasted as if I was eating some sort of coconutty dessert bread. HEAVENLY! :D
A stake was also on the menu which arrived looking like roadkill... like something I may have run over in my Warthog and then nailed to a two by four. The waiter then proceeded to hand me what could be described as a jungle knife... similar to what I melee attack people with on MW2. I was half expecting someone to rush me :/ Taste wise it was very chewy and salty.... i could have just killed this thing myself lol.
A friend of mine had ordered the Scallops which when arrived seemed a bit bland and pathetic and definately not worth £6.70. We had also ordered a vegetable tikka which was very poor. It was basically two vegetable kebabs on a slab with some sorry looking salad at the side - all for £7.95! Disappointed.

What i didnt like about the service was it took 20mins just to seat us.The staff seem polite enough, when they are around. We had to wait quite sometime for our drinks to arrive and even then we had to order it twice and then it took even longer for the meal to arrive. And secondly how noisy it is. With an open kitchen, the sheer noise generated from this is enough to drown out any conversation if your unfortunate enough to sit nearby not to mention the chatter from other customers. Reminds me of school canteens (not a happy thought) Someone needs to invest in some serious noise reduction.

Overall the foods good, not brilliant though especially if you have an experienced pallate in indian food. Service is a bit slow at best but perhaps we had simply gone at a busy time? It did seem like a full house. But then again isnt this a sign of bad management?

We give this an Average Rating of 3/5 Snukes