11. Noor

67 Cricklewood Broadway
020 8830 6688

Gourmand writes: For some inexplicable reason, I once took a date to Noor. For reasons I wouldn't dream of going into on this public forum, it ended badly. My second visit to Noor - cue nasty flashbacks - ended even more disastrously, but at least on this occasion I didn't have a tablemate I wanted to kiss.

"Gormless," I said, pointing conspiratorially at the menu. "They charge for bread." I tutted loudly. Persia Restaurant doesn't charge for bread. But my tuts were premature because the bread, cooked from scratch in a clay oven by the window, is absolutely wonderful. We used it to mop up a faultless kashk o-bademjan (mashed aubergine with curdled milk) and a great borani (spinach and yoghurt).

The main courses were even better. The chelo lamb kebab melted in the mouth and the chelo khoresht fesenjan was even better, a stew with chopped walnuts, pomegranate sauce, chicken and saffron rice. It was, I asserted, the best food we'd had on the Broadway. But there was absolutely no atmosphere to speak of inside its exposed brickwork walls. The service was a bit grumpy, too.

The meal ended with a black bug, about an inch-and-a-half long, jumping onto my head, then onto my shoulder, and then crawling down my back. I can't rule out the possibility Gormless bought it from a Socialist Worker at the G20 protests and threw it on my head as payback for my spectacular April fool, in which I said I was quitting Gullets. There may have been some other perfectly logical explanation, but the black bug took the gloss off an otherwise excellent performance.
6.5/10

Gormless writes: I am assured by some of my anarchist friends that this week's G20 protests represented "a significant reversal of unilateral dictats, issued arbitarily by our capitalist overlords". On April Fool's Day my personal representative of the "system", Gourmand, cruelly joked that he was going to remove one of the few joys that brings light to my browbeaten days: this blog. I fell for it, to his great mirth, and confirmed him in his low opinion of the working man: a gullible beast, fit only for contempt. Little did he know that I had payback plans, a stunt rich in symbolism, one that asked "who is the real parasite here?"

I put it into action at Noor on Friday night. Of course, the food is what you are interested in and I can report that it is good. Indeed, I would say Noor is up there with Abyssinia in producing tasty and diverting dishes. The chicken stew was far from the dish I make under this name; it was much more like a curry. The lamb kebabs were perfectly cooked and the rice plentiful and light. The bread was cooked in front of us and was well worth the pound or so it cost. The interior brick work reminded me of the inelegant murals in my childhood swimming pool.

Although low on customers, atmosphere and engaging staff, it was an enjoyable meal...although the best was still to come! As the meal came to an end I released a bug Wazzo sourced from the ditch round the back of his house, by the shops. It climbed up Gourmand's jumper and caused him discomfort comparable to that expereinced by the working man under the hegemonic parasitism of him and his class. Forget the G20 or the RBD: classy Noor saw real class war.
7.5/10

Overall score: 14/20
Noor will be bugged - ha! - they're not competing near the top of the table

10. Khana

68 Cricklewood Broadway
020 8452 2789

Gourmand writes: Rumours of this blog's death are greatly exaggerated. After selling his soul to science, Gormless has cobbled together enough coppers to purchase a bowl of curry and half a peshwari at "north-west London's number one Indian restaurant" (their words, not ours). I downed a celebratory lassi, salty not sweet; toasted Gormless´ renewed solvency, and was overcome with emotion thinking about London's most obscure food blog stumbling sheepishly into double figures.

A week later and here I am in Portugal, trying to find the comma button on a demented keyboard, looking longingly at the beautiful River Douro, drinking ludicriously cheap tawny port, and trying hard not to think about the drab interior of 68 Cricklewood Broadway. But as the humble, hideaway comma slowly reveals itself with the help of the mysterious Alt Gr key, and lunch's cream-topped bacalhau and green wine distributes its calorific charms to rosy cheeks and a fresh bump of Portuguese port-belly, I regretably recall a table of lads furiously debating the merits of Tottenham Hotspur's new left-back. Yes, it's all coming back to me. I remember reading the menu, seeing they served curry-flavoured curry, and wanting to punch the waiter.

I recall my surprise that we ate decent, perfectly acceptable post-Beaten Docket Anglo-Indian grub, although, as a Briton, I was only claiming my birthright and reasserting my national identity. The chicken jalfrezi was predictably low on the green chillies; the Pakistani lamb was surprisingly mild for something made with "the chef's special blend of 12 spices" (maybe they all cancelled each other out?), and the peshwari nan was exceptionally sweet, like it had been melded together with marzipan. Yum, kind of.

Portugal has nothing on the Cricklewood Broadway. I yearn for the flavours of home.
7/10

Gormless writes: Sorry, readers, but the Gullets hiatus was caused by my lack of money. Gourmand, always keen to combat the "fecklessness of the working class", has invested my Giro in gold bullion. He assures me that this will bring a return of two Gullets trips a month, for life.

The first of these trips took place last Friday. It was an Indian, which means another of those popular Gullets sub-battles: Pink Rupee versus Khana. Unloved Pink Rupee drew heavily on its Indian/Nepalese heritage; Khana is very much an English Indian. Not only did they play beer and cheer indie anthems, but the customers were either lads sharing football insight or dining families. I've always said that "curry is our national dish" (ref: Beaten Docket Immigration Debates, 1992-present) and places like Khana are set up to make the most of this. I am not saying this is right or wrong. It is just the way it is.

We ate three curries and their usual accompaniments. Apart from the spinach and cottage cheese dish it was pretty predictable fare. It was all tasty, everything ran smoothly and it passed without incident. A nice meal, then, but Khana's professionalism, efficiency and ambition (their aim is to be the best Indian restaurant in north-west London) does not fit comfortably onto Cricklewood Broadway and some character has been sacrificed.

7/10

Overall score: 14/20
Khana cruises into third place

09. Lihiniya

Lihiniya
66 Cricklewood Broadway
020 8208 2658

Gourmand writes: With no staff in sight, we edged towards the back of the restaurant. Surely somebody worked at Lihiniya? Eventually, a confused-looking woman emerged from the kitchen.

"Can I help you?" she asked.
"We'd like to order food, please."
"Khana Indian restaurant is next door."

It's never a good sign when a restaurateur assumes you've gone to the wrong place.

"No, we don't want Indian food. We want Sri Lankan food."
"Not now. We're about to go out"

It was 7pm on a Saturday. There was a pause.

"What food do you want?"
"Hoppers, string hoppers," I replied.
"OK, no problem," she said, gesturing towards a table.

I hope I'm not making our host sound unpleasant. She was polite and sweet, but it still felt like we'd unwittingly stumbled into her private residence. Unopened envelopes and crumpled napkins sat on the tables and at the back of the restaurant there were a couple of chairs, a computer and a load of videos. This was their living room.

Twenty minutes later a large tray of food arrived. String hoppers (rice noodle pancakes), egg hoppers (bowl-shaped rice flour pancakes cooked with an egg), coconut and seeni (sweet onion) sambols, and lamb and chicken curries. The meat wasn't fantastic, but for £5 each it was a bargain.

"I thought you had the wrong restaurant," our hostess chuckled as we settled the meagre bill.
"No, we like Sri Lankan food," I replied, hoping Gormless wouldn't reveal we had to visit Lihiniya as it was the next restaurant on the street.

Oh, Lihiniya. Insecure, confused Lihiniya. Here's some advice from the Gullets lads. Design a menu. Put up a new sign or two. Don't be so scared of customers. Have some self-belief. Look deep inside yourself and you'll find an real-life restaurant just bursting to get out. You can do it. We know you can.
6.5/10

Gormless writes: I'm sorry to demystify the Gullets process, but this was not our first visit to Lihiniya. We called into the restaurant a couple of weeks ago to see when the advertised Hopper Night took place. In the course of our conversation it became apparent that Lihiniya staged a nightly paradox: every evening is Hopper Night, yet Hopper Night never occurs. There are never any customers to make it happen. On Saturday night we turned years of on-standby hopper readiness into a real, existing meal situation.

I have been to a Hopper Night once before. It was a high concept mishmash of Easy Rider (starring Dennis Hopper), space hoppers and pogo sticks. This one was all about the pancake or noodle-style bases we were invited to combine with curry and other dishes into a layered meal. I enjoyed ripping fragments from my egg hopper and pinching chicken bits with them.

We sat on the lower of two levels. The eating area was dressed to host a Christmas wedding. The higher level featured a neglected beach bar. The whole place is like an installation designed to illustrate themes of abandonment, neglect, potential… that sort of thing. Yet, we roused this dormant operation and it delivered. Fine Sri Lankan music filtered through the PA, the bewildered staff turned chatty and the food was very good and very cheap. Truly, this is the kind of eventual eating the Gullets team thrives upon.

7/10

Overall score: 13.5/20

The Sri Lankans enter joint third place with Mango Grills

08. Mango Grills

Mango Grills
58 Cricklewood Broadway
020 8450 9999

Gourmand writes: It may surprise you to learn that I, Gourmand, have my detractors. These critics allege I'm not the food expert my pen name suggests. On a handful of obscure sub-Saharan cookery techniques these jealous fools may have a point, but challenge me on my command of the Arabic kitchen and I'll point to numerous case studies demonstrating my commitment to my research. I've eaten whole sheep's heads, raw livers, sheep's testicles and enough raw lamb to red carpet next month's Academy Awards. Having eaten at hundreds of Lebanese restaurants, including the best places in Beirut, I can confirm that Mango Grills is, well, a little above average.

Sadly for me, there are no adventurous dishes on the menu (what, no bollocks?), and the two dishes I really wanted (muhammara and fried kebbeh) weren't available. The unavailability of the former is understandable - it's a Syrian dish - but no fried kibbeh? Not good.

But apart from a soggy, microwaved lamb sambousek, the food we ordered was very good. Sorry to harp on about my impeccable credentials, but I've eaten more hommus than Terry Waite and am confident that Mango Grills' creamy, tangy 'Beiruty' version, with hot peppers and parsley, belongs up there with the best of them. The warak inab (stuffed vine leaves) were perky, fresh and sweet, the fattoush bristled with mint, onion and sumac, and the beef sujok (spicy sausages) were delicious too.

As with finished the meal with gloriously good baklava, I looked round the empty restaurant and wished Mango Grills had more customers. It's a clean, if rather bare, place with friendly service and reasonable pricing - we paid £15 for two. Just don't expect any (nasty) surprises.
7/10

Gormless writes:
How Gourmand has changed my life, Part #2567. On the morning of the day that would conclude with this meal I woke up in a gay art house. Before I started collaborating on this blog I would be more likely to target such an establishment with stones and spray paint than sleep in it.

I mention this for two reasons. First: I nursed a giant hangover throughout the day, which may prejudice this review. Second: Well, waking up in a gay art house and eating dinner in a Lebanese restaurant is some sort of bohemian dream, isn't it? In fact, I think you can buy it as one of those 'experience' days in Debenhams. Fuck that, ladies and gentleman. Here I am, living it!

On closer examination, however, my narrative collapses. There was only one gay in the house and the art was at best mediocre and at worst articles cut out of Metro. The Lebanese restaurant was called Mango Grills and had no atmosphere, nor customers to speak of. Indeed, in terms of restaurants we have visited so far it was most reminiscent of Mr Chan's - never a glowing comparison - because it functioned largely as a takeaway.

So geared were they towards over-the-counter service they even managed to 'take away' two of the menu options we wanted to order. We persevered and managed to order the decent mezze Gourmand has described to you above. For me, the only weak dish was the sambousek, which looked and tasted like a Birds Eye rendition of the Lebanese favourite. Our host was knowledgeable and personable, and happily gave us a big jug of tap water.

The moral of this review? Next time someone boasts to you about their gay art house/Lebanese restaurant 'experiences', remember that the reality often fails to live up to the billing. Good service, discretion and efficient transactions are all you can really expect from either.

6.5/10

Overall score 13.5/20

Mango Grills cruises into the bronze medal position

07. The Windmill Gastropub

The Windmill Gastropub

57 Cricklewood Broadway, 020 8450 4270

Gourmand writes: "You're more likely to find a synagogue in Gaza City," I wisecracked when I first heard rumours of a gastropub in Cricklewood. And, naturally enough, The Windmill is about as much of a gastropub as Gormless is a gourmand.

To be fair, we didn't eat from the gastropub menu, although this wasn't our fault. We presented my Taste London card, which is meant to get me half-price food, but it was rejected by the (very pleasant) woman behind the bar after she called her boss to check, and five minutes after she told us it would be fine. Not her fault at all, but by glancing into the open kitchen and listening to the whirr of the deep-fryer we got a strong feeling that ordering the pork belly would be a mistake.

There are two rooms at The Windmill - a quiet dining room totally lacking in atmosphere and a pub with football on big screens you can't see from most of the seats. We sat in front of an Everton game and ordered from the bar food menu. The food was poor and crazily overpriced. The nachos were puny tortilla chips with bargain basement salsa and a tiny portion of melted cheese; criminally guacamole was nowhere to be seen. My sausage sandwich was even worse. A single sliced sausage was presented in limply toasted rye bread with a few scraps of salad. We'll go back and eat from the main menu when they decide to accept my card, but after such pathetic pub grub our expectations are very low.
3/10

Gormless writes: If The Windmill had a description of their perfect customer, he would probably resemble me. For I am proud I choose FHM over Nuts, I tend to dress 'smart-casual' and not in sports gear and I look down on Wetherspoon's as a populist snare. I am also the kind of gormless twat who is content to sit in a low-concept gastropub and order overpriced food to accompany a neck-craning football 'experience'. Truly The Windmill and other pubs of its ilk have me stitched up: flatter my good taste and then present me with a weighty bill.
I had a plate of nachos while Gourmand suffered a sausage sandwich. The chef was more interested in flirting with the waitress then in preparing our food and both dishes - hard to get either that wrong - suffered. My nachos lacked the guacamole that's their birthright while Gourmand received a single sliced sausage for his outlay. We may return for full meals, but these items on the pub menu were very poor.

3/10

Overall score: 6/20
A rubbish effort by The Windmill

06. The Beaten Docket

The Beaten Docket
50-56 Cricklewood Broadway, 020 8450 2972

Gourmand writes: "This country. It's getting worse all the time," moans the corpse at the bar. "It could be worse," replies the corpse to his left. "It could be Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe."

At its best, this JW Wetherspoon pub is a place where sixty-something male alcoholics congregate to drink real ale and moan about the state of things today. At its worst, it's a place where lonely, depressed sixty-something inebriates sit alone, stare at the wall, shuffle in their chair occasionally, stumble home at midnight and return the next morning to do the whole thing again. Whether they're angrily lamenting "Brown's Broken Britain", sipping the head of a Goffs Merlin (4.3% ABV) or dribbling down their chin dementedly while arguing with their dead wives, everyone's foaming at the mouth at this undeservedly popular old people's home.

There's no background music or sports TV at Wetherspoons, which means you can hear your fellow customers dying. The man sitting behind us summons every ounce of strength to keep his nose from drooping in his pint glass. The tinsel and glitter adorning the walls seem wholly inappropriate. It's Christmastime at the morgue.

The food is cheap. Straight from the packet, cooked from frozen. The tortilla chips with salsa are passable, as is my sweet potato, chick pea and spinach curry, although the naan bread is cold and tough. It's his birthday, so I treat Gormless to a 'gourmet' burger (a poor man's burger with extra cheese and bacon). The meat is tough, chewy and miserable. You get what you pay for.

There's a silver lining. As Gormless completes another journey round the sun and joins me on the precipice of a fourth decade, we bask in the glory of being the youngest people in The Beaten Docket by at least 20 years. Worth a toast, I think.
5/10

Gormless writes: Five restaurants in and I think now is a good time to pay tribute to Gourmand. He has introduced me to new cuisines from around the world on my doorstep. Nigerian, Persian, Ethiopian… what, I wondered, would he have in store for me on my birthday?

It was Wetherspoons. I’m not complaining, but a night spent dodging the despairing glances of broken men is the kind of ‘experience’ I look to my patron to liberate me from. I fell in, though, and in a desperate play for finesse ordered the gourmet burger with its predictable chip and onion ring companions. It was all barely serviceable stodge enlivened by conversation and fellow diner speculation; all washed down with super cheap gin and tonic. I had some of Gourmand’s chick pea curry. It was borderline fine.

It was a night at Wetherspoons. What would you expect?
5.5/10

Overall score: 10.5/20
The best pub so far, out of one

05. D'Den

D'Den
47 Cricklewood Broadway, 020 8830 5000

Gourmand writes: I've often wondered what's behind those tinted windows. There's a clue in D'Den's charmingly home-cooked videos on YouTube, in which owner, head chef and all-round Cricklewood micro-celebrity Balo talks enthusiastically about the "governors, senators, footballers - all walks of life" that make up his restaurant's clientele. Tonight, I hoped, we'd spy on top-ranking Abuja officialdom - and maybe even Efan Ekoku - mired in a D'Den of sleaze.

I've had Nigerian food before and it wasn't great. Ferocious spicing annihilated any subtleties of flavouring, the meat was chewy and the sauces glooped weirdly like hot mozzarella. We avoided gloop on this occasion due to D'Den's confusing menu. Every dish appears to be a soup; these cost around £6, but don't include meat (£5 extra for goat, for example). We're hardly Nigerian oligarchs, so we asked our server if she could give us a selection of the country's cuisine for £25. Baffled, she nudged us in the direction of grilled fish, fried plantain and jollof rice - what everyone else there was eating.

The croaker was char-grilled to perfection, with either a hint or a hurricane or spiciness depending on how much of the accompanying, debilitating salsa ended up on the fork. The jollof rice (with spices and tomatoes) and fried plantain were both tasty, but unexciting. We watched TV ads promoting seatbelts and condoms in Lagos, and, disorientatingly, D'Den on Cricklewood Broadway; drank Star Beer, brewed in Lagos; and eventually met Balo, who was as nice as he appears on the internet. It was an evening without sleaze, though, until a prostitute introduced herself to us on the street just outside Mr Chan's.
6/10

Gormless writes: D’Den promised the kind of dining experience this blog was made for. Not only is the Nigerian cuisine exotic, but the premises are strikingly unfamiliar. Blacked out windows, a lion logo, blood red lettering, goat stew; these features combined to raise it above its competitors in my imagination. My expectations built D’Den into something it could not live up to. For these days any food outside of the Sainsbury’s Basics range is strange to me; any venue other than my poorly-lit room a blessed relief. Lo! How the gormless have fallen.

Upon entering D’Den, most of my illusions were undermined. It was a restaurant like any other; albeit one in love with its own on-screen advertisements and raucous enough to be a social club. The menu was so confusing we asked our waitress to pick for us and, when she declined, we fell into copying our neighbours in ordering a big, dirty-looking fish. They appeared to eat the whole thing, including the head, bones and plate, and after a long wait we were primed to do the same. The grilled choaker was served with jollof rice, plantain and some chilli sauce that certainly made it a memorable meal (masking its dubious quality). I drank some Nigerian Star beer and enjoyed pulling the requisite poses with the complementary toothpick.

This is my first Gullets review to take the ‘longer view’. The morning after I woke up sick and suspect the fish may have been to blame. A mark off for that - the one that was added mid-meal when D’Den honcho Balo entered and demonstrated his extreme affability.
6/10

Overall score: 12/20
Nigeria lies second out of two in Cricklewood's African Cup of Nations