Red Fort

Red Fort is an Indian restaurant on Dean Street. Sounds nice and simple, well it's a posh Indian restaurant on Dean street. One with a slightly intimidating but smart exterior and a man on the door. Starting to sound more complicated? Good. There is a bar downstairs that serves good cocktails and has slightly worryingly efficient service. But back to the restaurant, for an Indian restaurant it has a small selection of vegetarian food, no mains, but all vegetable dishes can be eaten as mains, fair enough. In fact I found it hard to tell whether the vegetable dishes were sides or mains and, when they came, what the difference was. And this is where the trouble starts, the food tasted good and the service was brisk and friendly enough but by the end of the meal, although we had all had a good time, one look at the bill left me feeling thoroughly ripped off. Joff had a mushroom dish as his main but it was served in the same dish as the side dishes and put on the table without an explanation, was it part of the table's side dishes or his main? As a result he had to grab it quickly before it was snaffled by someone else. My aubergines were good, spicy and stuffed with paneer and cashews, but absolutely tiny ( I guess I should have paid more attention the descriptor 'baby' on the menu). A selection of starters for everyone translated as everyone getting a plate each containing all of the starters - an expensive an unnecessary way of doing it as we had to give away all of our fish and meat starters and were left with a tiny patty and a mini veg kebab. with rice and bread for the table, again, (the table was very well fed) and water brought without the choice of tap, the bill came to an astounding £60 a head! i have been to a fair few expensive restaurants but this was undoubtedly the most expensive when you take into consideration what we actually got for our money. Oh and the bill for the water alone came to £ 40. We managed to have a good evening despite this and the bill was met with disbelief and good humour. However I will not be going back and I would advise others not to unless they are feeling extraordinarily flush. Next time i might try Amaya or Veeraswamy.