Mamounia lounge, the exotic and luxurious Lebanese restaurant located on Curzon Street in Mayfair, London is sure to give you an exquisite dining experience. Home to some of London’s most inventive Arabic cuisine and creative cocktails, its quickly become a popular foodie favourite and one of the city’s most well-known restaurants. It is the contrivance of Omar Wafai, who launched the restaurant with his father with the aspiration of creating a family-run business that offers a truly veritable Middle Eastern experience in West London. Cimmerian colours set the mysterious tone upon arrival, an aesthetically pleasing atmosphere.
A view of the bar from where I was seated
We are seated in the corner as a lovely waitress takes our order of a sharing platter that costs £36. “It will fill you up, it’s a really big dish,” she says. There are six of us and we are ready to devour this dish. Finally, it arrives. A small wooden oval-shaped board with a couple of pieces of meat, a carmine chilly and an ecru coloured sauce is placed on our table. “Enjoy your meal.” She walks off. Puzzled, we think the order is wrong, the dish was bitty, inadequate for six hungry people. We stop fussing and begin to split the pieces of meat; lamb chops, grilled chicken and Kobideh, a meat kebab made from ground lamb or beef mixed with chopped onions and parsley.
The Sharing Platter priced at £36.00
The first bite into the lamb chop is soft, silky and weightless. The meat has a gamy and pleasant flavour combined with the succulent juiciness which doesn’t fail to surprise the taste buds. The chicken was average, nothing special about it, it was grilled and tasted of tikka and a few basic spices. The kobideh, however, was light and spongy with a briny, yet full-bodied taste, which I very much enjoyed.
As we continued munching, the waitress approached us with our cocktails, priced at £8 each. Visually appeasing, the taste did not fail to disappoint either. A sharp fruity flavour immediately hits, zinging and ecstatic. After our decent meal is complete, the bubbly waitress comes over with our bill. Once again we are hit with a jolt. The total was £90. We didn’t think it would be that much but I guess the £10.52 service charge massively contributed to the potty pricing. “How was the food? I bet our big platter really filled you up!” I looked at her with a weak smile, “it really didn’t,” I said, in my head. As tempted as I was to say it out loud, I kept quiet. “Yes it was very delicious, thank you.” After giving her the money we walked out and saw a chicken cottage down the road. I mean, we were still hungry after all.
Dina Nazari 