Pasha, SW7

Pasha is a Moroccan restaurant close to the Royal Albert Hall. Four of us ate here on 16th June 2007. The food was delicious, with lots of different flavours. There is a price fixed menu on Friday and Saturday evenings - £27 for 2 kemias and one main, £32 for 3 kemias and one main. We went for the £27 option, but two of us had the Meshwi for our main, which added another £6. They also offer a number of set meals, ranging in price from £30 to £43 a head. If you do not like the idea of fixed price menus, it is worth a phone call to check when they are not operating, although I think you can eat a selection of kemias in the lounge area at any time.

The kemias are small(ish) starter dishes, either hot or cold. With 4 of us, we had 8 different ones which we shared. The hummus was the best any of us had ever tasted; all these dishes were full of flavour, and there was plenty for us all to share. The main Meshwi was slow roasted lamb on a bed of couscous with prunes, apricots and figs. The meat fell off the bone, and it was very tender and flavoursome. There was sufficient in this one dish for four of us to have had plenty for a main course without anything else. One criticism was that the dish could have done with more liquid in the couscous. Our other two mains were tagines; one duck and one lemon chicken. If we hadn't agreed to share everything, I would have eaten all the duck myself - the flavours were fantastic! The tagines do not have any couscous with them, so we had a side order of it. This was superfluous because of the amount of couscous with the Meshwi, but if we had not had that, then I would recommend one side order of couscous between two tagines.

We were full, so we did not order any desserts, although they all sounded very tempting. We finished with one filter coffee and 3 mint teas. We had two bottles of wine. Total bill came to just under £200, but this included an 'optional' 15% gratuity. We left the gratuity at that level because of the service we received.

We were eating early, having been to an afternoon performance at the Royal Albert Hall - we left the restaurant at about 9pm, by which time the volume of the music had increased, and there were two belly dancers. We could have done with a lower volume and no belly dancers.

We are already planning to take some more friends to Pasha, and we will undoubtedly eat there again on our own.