Very good meal after taking Tripadvisor’s rating with pinch of salt
TRIPADVISOR is both a blessing and curse for restaurants.
While it can help unearth hidden gems which otherwise wouldn’t get the airtime they deserve, it can also do great harm to restaurants’ reputations.
It’s particularly an issue because people tend to write reviews when they’ve either had an amazing experience or a terrible one.
An average meal doesn’t have people flocking to their keyboards in quite the same way.
Take Cardiff Bay’s Zaika, for example. This Indian-Pakistani restaurant, in the Red Dragon Centre, currently sits at a lowly 738 out of 833 places to eat in the city on Tripadvisor. It has 33 excellent and very good reviews, 30 poor or terrible reviews and only three average reviews.
Positive reviews have praised the place for its “friendly service and delicious food” and the place to go “if I want Asian food in Cardiff”.
However, negative reviews have called the restaurant out for “having the worst customer service in Cardiff ” and one diner was particularly outraged as “the waiter made me and my cousin pass the dishes to my family members”.
With such a poor position in Cardiff’s restaurant rankings I’m sure Zaika is the kind of place many people would avoid.
But I’d been personally recommended it by someone in the hospitality industry whose opinion I trust so I was fairly confident it would be worth a visit.
When we arrived at Zaika around 5.30pm the bright and colourful dining room was quiet but it gradually filled up throughout our meal.
If you’ve ever visited City Road’s Mirchi or London’s famous Tayyabs then you’ll know what to expect from Zaika’s menu – it’s packed with barbecued meat, biryanis and curries, some of which are served on the bone and sold by weight.
There are also some really interesting sounding autumnal vegetable dishes, including baby pumpkin curry and bitter gourds.
As Zaika doesn’t serve alcohol we ordered a couple of glasses of mango lassi (£2). I think a bucket would have been a more appropriate description as each serving would have kept a family happy – ice cold, creamy and twanged with tropical fruit, it was absolutely delicious.
Complementary poppadoms were slightly on the greasy side but I couldn’t fault their crispness and freshness. They were accompanied by a trio of dips including a particularly impressive tomato and chilli-twanged chutney, minty yoghurt and light mango chutney.
Golden vegetable pakora were laced with earthy spice and thrummed with chilli. The generous portion for £2.90 maintained a theme of generosity which ran throughout the meal.
A heaped plateful of lamb biryani (£9.50) was a corker. The mountain of fluffy, buttery, distinct grained and fragrant rice was studded with spoonably tender lamb. It was served with a choice of curry sauce or tangy raitha and we plumped for the latter.
An excellent mixed grill (£12.90) announced its arrival with an enthusiastic sizzle. Chicken tikka and wings were both juicy and nicely char-licked while a chicken seekh kebab was better than a lamb one due to its bigger hit of fresh green herb. But, the star of the show was a quartet of blushing pink lamb chops with soft mouth-melting fat.
A chicken karahi (£7.90) looked fairly run of the mill and a little greasy but it was a lovely dish. With a great depth of spice and rich butteriness, the gravy was studded with lots of tender chicken.
A crisp, soft and delicately chewy naan (£1.20) was a great scoop for the sauce.
Absolutely stuffed, we doggy-bagged a couple of boxes for dinner the next night. While it took a little while to get hold of the waiter’s attention to pay our bill, it didn’t detract from the otherwise warm, friendly and efficient service we had throughout our meal.
Overall, we had a very good meal at Zaika and I’ll continue to take Tripadvisor’s ratings with a pinch of salt.
Zaika is a top notch independent restaurant in the chain-dominated Cardiff Bay and I heartily recommend it.