Madhu's At The Sheraton

Madhu’s at The Sheraton is a smarter sister to the long established Madhu’s in Southall. The dining room is carefully fitted out and could easily past muster in Mayfair. The menu of Punjabi food is similar to its older sibling, but here is there is a charcoal robata grill, which adds an extra dimension to some of the dishes. As you begin you are given mini-popadoms and a choice of three chutneys.

The tandoori lamb chops are a signature dish here and were as good as ever tonight. The meat was suffused with spices and very tender, with the additional flavour note from the charcoal grill - a very fine dish indeed (15/20). Murgh malai had a generous portion of marinated chicken that had been cooked in the robata grill: the meat was very tender and lightly spiced, the charcoal adding its extra hint of smoky flavour (14/20).

A side dish of cauliflower was genuinely superb, the texture excellent, the spicing accurate. It is one thing to make a luxury ingredient like turbot or langoustine taste nice, but it takes skill to elevate the humble cauliflower to this level (15/20). Romali roti is my favourite Indian bread and it is well made here, ultra-thin and supple (14/20). Spinach with paneer was pleasant, the spinach having plenty of flavour (13/20).

The bill came to £65 a head, but that was with a bottle of the excellent Littorai Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir. The wine list here has modest mark-ups by London standards, tapering off for the classier wines (I know this since I designed the list). Service was good, the large dining room completely full on this weekend evening, with most tables being turned. The cooking here is in no way worse than much lauded Indian restaurants in central London, yet because of its out of the way and unglamorous location most will miss it. If you are ever in the Heathrow area then do yourself a favour and try it out.

Further reviews: 15th Aug 2023 | 04th Mar 2022 | 02nd Jul 2017 | 08th Aug 2016 | 19th Mar 2016 | 01st Mar 2015