Entertainments | Restaurant Reviews | Kismet
Kismet, Spencer Street, Leamington
OUR RATING: 4\5
Reviewer: Rachel Extance
Date of Review: October 2002
Indian food comes pretty high up on my list of favourite things so it was unlikely I’d be disappointed spending an evening at Kismet.
I’d passed the restaurant often but, rather like The Leaky Cauldron hiding the way to Diagon Alley, it’s one of those places I’d never noticed was actually there. When I first walked in it seemed a little small but once you got past the bar it turned out to be cosy but spacious.
The restaurant was decorated in red and gold with mirrors on the wall and we sat in a compartment near the back of the restaurant. I felt a little like I was in the dining car of the Orient Express. The atmosphere was warm and friendly although it was fairly quiet - but then it was 7pm on a Monday night.
I ordered spinach and cheese pakora to start with while my friend had chicken tikka. The pakora had just enough bite without being too spicy. I’m told the chicken was good which was lucky because he’d ordered chicken goan for the main course.
I decided to stick to my favourite combination of vegetable korma, pilau rice and peshwari nan - in my opinion, you can never have too much coconut. It was delicious and our only problem was there was too much food for us to eat it all - we made a mental note to skip eating the day before next time.
However I did manage to find just enough space for pistachio kulfi while my friend’s Irish coffee disappeared in about two seconds. Finally we were given Baileys in the dinkiest shot glasses we’d ever seen.
The only dip in the service was that we had to ask for our drinks four times before they arrived but otherwise it was excellent.
Altogether it was £33 well spent and I’ll definitely be going back.
