Alounak Restaurant, Westbourne Grove

Food was delicious - their bread is made fresh to order and their portions are huge. I would give the food 4/5 but had to dock a star due to the customer service. The servers that I interacted with were all very quiet which was fine, but one of them seemed to require a bit more training and just seemed annoyed the entire time. Mid meal, she came to our table and started rearranging the condiments (perhaps to start prepping for the next day), but would reach over my friend and I while we were eating. In the process, she knocked over the olive oil leaving a puddle of oil on our table. She did not return to wipe it up, so I did.

At the end of my meal I requested to take away the remaining food on my plate which had about 2/3 remaining. Rice, one roasted tomato (which I left specifically to take away), some salad and 1 skewer of koobideh. I returned home and was disappointed to find that only some rice and the koobideh was included but no tomato. I regret not doing it myself. Plus the takeaway box was flipped so the rice had poured out.

She was also very quick to clear our table without asking whether we wanted to take our bread (and just stacked it with our used plates and cutlery). I felt that a bit more communication would have been nice here. She could have asked whether we wanted to take away the bread as there was clearly a lot left.

Anyway, I thought the customer service from this server was really lacking which is why I couldn't give the restaurant a higher mark.

Again, this review is about the overall experience. Food was lovely but the service has much room for improvement.

We enjoyed the food, it was without a doubt 1 of the best, specially the Alounak special dish. Our only problem was the language barrier. We seriously struggled to get our orders on time with nothing missing. I changed my mind from the yogurt drink to mint lemonade, I got yogurt drink at the end. I didn't mind, but then we got the starter meal after our main meals (looked like she didn't write it) as we had to remind them.
I would suggest someone who should take the orders to have a decent level of a language skills to avoid this kind of avoidable mistakes.

Me and my husband ate here after noticing how busy it was - that's usually a good sign! We were not let down, the food was exceptional. My husband had lamb which he said was cooked perfectly. I'm vegetarian so I had an aubergine dish with the homemade bread. The waitress said we would only need one flatbread to share and I was doubtful, but it turned out she was right as it's the size of a tablecloth and, as mouth-watering as it was, we couldn't finish it all. The restaurant was really clean and beautifully decorated. Will definitely come back.